MÀCAT An Analysis of Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism Dale J. Stahl Copyright © 2017 by Macat International Ltd 24:13 Coda Centre, 189 Munster Road, London SW6 6AW. Macat International has asserted its right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the copyright holder of this work. The print publication is protected by copyright. Prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, distribution or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, permission should be obtained from the publisher or where applicable a license permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom should be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Barnard's Inn, 86 Fetter Lane, London EC4A 1EN, UK. The ePublication is protected by copyright and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased, or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and the publishers' rights and those responsible may be liable

MODULE 6 SECONDARY IDEAS KEY POINTS • Gellner's concept of industrialization* relies on the following ideas: 1) the society is mobile, fluid, and egalitarian, 2) certain human traits prove “resistant” to even dispersal throughout society, and 3) resistant traits form the basis of defining a new nation. • Gellner uses the idea of resistant traits to distinguish between two stages of nationalism.* These correspond to early or late industrialization. • Gellner's fascination with different cultures and traits informed his interest in Islam* and his positioning of the religion as having a vital impact on nationalism in Muslim* societies. Other Ideas After laying out his central argument in Nations and Nationalism, Ernest Gellner introduces two important secondary ideas in explaining nationalism's effects. The first has to do with the effect of industrialization in creating a society that is “random and fluid.”1 Gellner refers to this attribute as “social entropy.”* According to this idea, industrial societies* move toward cultural sameness or homogeneity,* but as they do so, certain human traits prove “entropy-resistant.” These are traits that, in a fluid and changing society, cannot become “evenly dispersed.”2 According to Gellner, an entropy-resistant trait “creates fissures, sometimes veritable chasms, in the industrial societies in which it occurs.”3 Gellner suggests this idea to try to differentiate between two Nationalism is a phenomenon connected not so much with industrialization or modernization as such, but with its uneven diffusion. Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change stages of nation making. In early industrialization, the “life chances of the well-off and the starving poor” differ widely. Certain traits of the disadvantaged group could be “entropy-resistant” and thus politically activated. That is, traits not evenly dispersed in society can over time become markers of a certain political status, economic position, or other difference. If so, Gellner argues that individuals may “identify

Notes [←1] See Raymond Aron, 18 Lectures on Industrial Society (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967).