Abstract Nationalism is an essentially secular form of consciousness, one that, indeed, sacralizes the secular. This renders the temptation to treat it as a religion problematic. The framework of individual and collective identities in modern societies, nationalism both obscures the importance of the transcendental concerns that lie at the core of great religions and undermines their authority. Though instrumental in the development of nationalism, religion now exists on its sufferance and serves mainly as a tool for the promotion of nationalist (...) ends, not vice versa. (shrink)

Gosh, we lead busy lives. Most of the people I know no longer have the time, even occasionally, to stop and think. And yet, this is not because we accomplish or do so much. In fact, in comparison with other historical and some contemporary societies, we do not. Think, for instance, about the masses of itinerant agricultural laborers who participated in the Gang System in early industrial England after 1834…. This form of labor organization was an answer to the demand (...) for irregular work-force which arose with the development of large-scale commercial agriculture. Bands of workers of all ages and both sexes, under the direction of an overseer moved from farm to farm as their services were required. They worked long hours for a little pay, and most of them depended entirely on what they earned doing so. Life before the industrial revolution was not better, and even affluence and higher status rarely translated into leisure. At the end of the 18th century it was still common for gentlewomen, mistresses of large dairy farms, to take an active part in production, not only as a manager, but as the most skilled, and therefore most involved manual worker. Conditions across the Atlantic differed, but not dramatically. American factories were no playgrounds either, not then and not much later, as anyone who watched Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times and/or read Dreiser’s American Tragedy, would well recognize. The hours, by our standards, were exceedingly long, the discipline oppressively harsh, the work copious and painstaking enough to keep one thoroughly exhausted by the end of the day and thus out of mischief on Sundays. Only…it did not. Somehow, these overworked people did not feel busy. (shrink)

Accounts that attribute nationalism to capitalism or industrialization face the problem of nationalism in late?stage capitalist, or as some might say, post?industrial, societies. While increasing social significance has been attributed to economic growth throughout human history, reasons for this are far from self?evident. By looking at arguments made by Marx, List, and Smith, a new understanding of the relationship between nationalism and economics emerges?one that explains the attribution of social importance to economic development by revealing it as a function of (...) nationalism. (shrink)

Abstract In ?The Worth of Nations? I proposed that nationalism was a major factor in the emergence of the modem, growth?oriented economy. In response to criticisms, I demonstrate here the nationalistic inspiration of seventeenth?century English?or British?economic tracts. Urging a reconsideration of earlier approaches (such as that of W.W. Rostow) to the problem of why?rather than how?the modern economy emerged, I agree with Max Weber's challenge to the naturalness of our proclivity for constant economic expansion, while departing from his explanation for (...) it. (shrink)

Some of the most celebrated theories of nationalism exemplify the self‐confirming, evidence‐averse, deterministic, and ideological aspects of social science as we know it. What has gone wrong? The social sciences have modeled themselves on physics, failing to grasp the essential difference between the contingent, historical development of cultural particularity and the universal, law‐like regularities of inanimate matter. The physicist's tools for conducting the method Popper called “conjecture and refutation” are largely inappropriate when dealing with imaginative and therefore unpredictable human beings. (...) Obsessive quantification and the assumption of universal “social” laws, in particular, need to be de‐emphasized in favor of a Weberian willingness to make conjectures about the causes of unique events, and to test those hypotheses by comparing them to apparently similar cases. (shrink)