Primordialism is the idea that

nations A nation is a type of social organization where a collective identity, a national identity, has emerged from a combination of shared features across a given population, such as language, history, ethnicity, culture, territory, or societ ...

or ethnic identities are fixed, natural, and ancient.Jack Hayward, Brian Barry, Archie Brown (2003) p 330 Primordialists argue that each individual has a single inborn ethnic identity independent of historical processes. While implicit primordialist assumptions are common in society and academic research, primordialism is widely rejected by scholars of nationalism and ethnicity, as individuals can have multiple ethnic identities which are changeable and socially constructed.

Term

The term primordialism is associated with sociologist Edward Shils and anthropologist

Clifford Geertz Clifford James Geertz (; August 23, 1926 – October 30, 2006) was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology and who was considered "for three decades&n ...

. Shils was the first one who used this term in 1957 to describe the bonds between family members. The relations between family members cannot be interpreted as any interpersonal relations, but have a quality of their own which can only be described as "primordial" and which derives from the bond of blood. The meaning of the term was later expanded by Clifford Geertz, according to whom relations of individuals to a community result from their birth into that community, as they inevitably acquire the community's language and social practices. According to Geertz, individuals' ties to certain groups are "natural" and do not result from social interaction. Furthermore, such spiritual bonds exist in all societies and accompany all individuals, although the strength of the primordial connections may vary at the individual level, from society to society, or across time. However, political scientist John Coakley does not name Shils or Geertz as the first theorists or adopters of the concept of primordialism, although he discusses their works. According to Coakley, neither Shils nor Geertz could be considered primordialist thinkers, since Shils only described subjectively perceived blood ties and the importance of kinship as such. Geertz, according to Coakley, also did not try to show that the bonds between group members are objectively natural and "given", but only assumed to be "given" by the group members themselves which is inconsistent with the concept of primordialism.

Idea

Primordialism can be traced philosophically to the ideas of

German Romanticism German Romanticism () was the dominant intellectual movement of German-speaking countries in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, influencing philosophy, aesthetics, literature, and criticism. Compared to English Romanticism, the German vari ...

, particularly in the works of

Johann Gottlieb Fichte Johann Gottlieb Fichte (; ; 19 May 1762 – 29 January 1814) was a German philosopher who became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Ka ...

and Johann Gottfried Herder. For Herder, the nation was synonymous with language group. In Herder's thinking,

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

was synonymous with thought, and as each language was learnt in

community A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given g ...

, then each community must think differently. This also suggests that the community would hold a fixed nature over time. There are conflicting opinions about the nature of primordialist theory. According to the radical primordialist view, the identity of national groups is determined by biological characteristics and

genes In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...

.Hale 2004, 460. Critics of primordialism, anthropologist Jack David Eller and sociologist Reed M. Coughlan, believe that primordialist view based on Geertz's ideas can lead to such a radical conclusion, since it perceives ethnic identity as an inexplicable, but at the same time an essential emotional phenomenon, which leads to the mystification of national emotions and, in turn, facilitates radical conclusions. However, political scientist Henry E. Hale, for example, finds that primordialists are generally not as dogmatic as their critics seem to think. He emphasizes that researchers representing primordialist views generally do not think that ethnicity is determined by blood ties or genes, but rather consider that while the connections between oneself and certain ethnic groups are cognitive, the characteristics of the groups that form the basis of this cognition have been developed and remain stable over a long period of time. According to Hale, the primordialist view of the nation relies heavily on the construction of social structures. Society is divided into groups which, by having various group characteristics (such as

culture Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...

tradition A tradition is a system of beliefs or behaviors (folk custom) passed down within a group of people or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common e ...

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

, physical characteristics,

religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

), are sufficiently distinct from each other. At the group level, these characteristics remain broadly unchanged, and kinship ties between individuals carry these characteristics on and hold the group together. Political scientist Murat Bayar also believes that primordialism is characterized not so much by the view that nationality is determined by nature or genes, but rather by the understanding of the permanence of ethnic identity. In other words, once the identity of a national group is established, it generally does not change very easily. According to Bayar, primordialists believe that although mother tongue, religion or culture are not transmitted by genes, the process of their formation is primordially given, insofar as individuals cannot choose which parents or cultural environment they are born into. This fact cannot be changed by later individual choices.Bayar 2009, 1642-1643. Primordialism was widely discredited after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, with many scholars of nationalism coming to treat the nation as a community constructed by the technologies and politics of

modernity Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular Society, socio-Culture, cultural Norm (social), norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the ...

(see

Modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

References

Sources

* Bayar, Murat, ‘Reconsidering Primordialism: an alternative approach to the study of ethnicity’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32.9, (2009), pp. 1–20. * Coakley, John. (2018). "‘Primordialism’ in nationalism studies: theory or ideology?" ''Nations and Nationalism'' 24, no. 2: 327–347. * Eller, Jack David and Reed M. Coughlan. (1993). "The Poverty of Primordialism: The Demystification of Ethnic Attachments". ''Ethnic and Racial Studies'' 16, no. 2: 183–202. * Gryosby, Steven, (1994) ‘The verdict of history: The inexpungeable tie of primordialityhuth – A response to Eller and Coughlan’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 17(1), pp. 164–171 * Hale, Henry E. (2004). "Explaining Ethnicity". ''Comparative Political Studies'' 37, no. 4: 458–485. * Harnischfeger, Johannes
"Secessionism in Nigeria"
ECAS 4 conference, Uppsala, (2011) * Jack Hayward, Brian Barry, Archie Brown (2003) ''The British Study of Politics in the Twentieth Century,'' Oxford University Press, * Dominique Jacquin-Berdal (2002) ''Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Horn of Africa: A Critique of the Ethnic Interpretation'' E Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press * Norval, Aletta J. (2012). "The Politics of Ethnicity and Identity". ''The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology'', edited by Edwin Amenta, Kate Nash and Alan Scott, 305–314. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Term

Idea

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Further reading