Primordialism or
perennialism is the argument which contends that
nations are ancient, natural phenomena.
[Jack Hayward, Brian Barry, Archie Brown (2003) p 330]Primordialism can be traced philosophically to the ideas of
German Romanticism, particularly in the works of
Johann Gottlieb Fichte and
Johann Gottfried Herder. For Herder, the nation was synonymous with
language group. In Herder's thinking, language was synonymous with thought, and as each language was learnt in
community, then each community must think differently. This also suggests that the community would hold a fixed nature over time.
Primordialism encountered enormous criticism after the
Second World War, with a few scholars of nationalism coming to treat the nation as a community constructed by the technologies and politics of
modernity.
[ Though largely rejected by most theorists of nationalism, some of its ideas have found parallels in ethnosymbolism.]Footnotes
See also
Bibliography
- Jack Hayward, Brian Barry, Archie Brown (2003) The British Study of Politics in the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0197262945
- Yehouda A. Shenhav (2006) The Arab Jews: a postcolonial reading of nationalism, religion, and ethnicity, Stanford University Press, ISBN 0804752966
- Dominique Jacquin-Berdal (2002) Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Horn of Africa: A Critique of the Ethnic Interpretation Edwin Mellen Press, ISBN 0773469540
