Primordialism

Tihomir Cipek
What we today refer to as primordialism is
the oldest paradigm that has been
employed to explain nations and
nationalism. It was first adopted by
nationalists themselves.
It holds that nations are natural and that
is why they exert so much influence in
human experience.

Because it is intrinsic for human beings to form
this group, primordialists would maintain that we
can find nations in any epoch of human history.
They would not hesitate, therefore, to claim that
the ancient Israelites, to take one example,
constituted a nation, although they would not
deny that there are nations which have emerged
more recently.
Because nations are part of human nature, they
can be found anytime, everywhere. The
emergence of a new nation is, then, often
explained as an awakening of a dormant entity.
Cliford Geertz
Cliford Geertz, who studied new states in
Asia and Africa that achieved
independence after the Second World
War, for instance, has noted that the
new states are abnormally
susceptible to serious disaffection
based on primordial attachments
(Geertz 1973/2000: 259).
Why does a nation command such intense loyalty
as to
sacrifice oneself in the name of the nation?
In short, nations cater for the fundamental needs of
human beings to locate themselves in time and place
and to belong to something sacred, and are thus part
and parcel of human existence.
Pierre L. van den Berghe, according him a nation is a
politically conscious ethny, that is, an ethny that claims
the right to statehood by virtue of being an ethny.
Ethnies, van den Berghe argues, are simply extended
kinships. Despite a variety of modernisation theories,
kinship ties remain powerful even in modern society
because of a general behavioural principle of all animals
including human beings to favour kin over nonkin.
What brings primordialisam?
The theorie of primordialism brings to the
studys of nations and nationalism the
issue of loyalty and emotion that
modernist approaches are often unable to
address directly.
Two things divide modernists from primordialists in the
debate about nations and nationalism. Both agree that
social groups (the wes) have always asserted a
collective identity, distinguishing themselves from other
groups (the thems), often in similar ways by ensembles
of shared symbols and historical narratives. Whether this
reflects primordial structures of social life or, at a greater
remove, Darwinian patterns for species survival, need
not concern us here.
Unlike primordialists, modernists believe that, however
long the real or ascribed historical continuity between
groups claiming the same name, earlier collectives
cannot be confused with the modern, essentially
class- or rather literacy-linked concept of the linguistic
nation and the essentially state-linked concept of
nationalism.
Nationalism and State
Buliding
Tihomir Cipek
Nation-State
The state is a political and geopolitical
entity, while the nation is a cultural and
ethnic one.
The term "nation state" implies that the
two coincide, but "nation state" formation
can take place at different times in
different parts of the world, and has
become the dominant form of world
organization.
Which came first, the nation or the
nation state?"
A) The nation existed first, then nationalist
movements arose for sovereignty, and the
nation state was created to meet that demand.
B) Some "modernization theories" of nationalism
see it as a product of government policies to
unify and modernize an already existing state.
C) Most theories see the nation state as a 19th-
century European phenomenon, facilitated by
developments such as mass literacy and mass
media.


Theodor Schieder Theorie of
Nation State Building
1) stage of nation state development.
Existing political order was changed by the
people revolution (France, England).
2) in the second stage nation-states were
built in the 19th century by unifying ethnic
and culturally related groups. Unifying is
done under the guidance of the most
powerful principalities or small kingdoms
(Italy, Germany).
3) In the third stage; nation-states were
constituted by separation from the great
empires, for example from the Austro-Hungarian
and Turkish (Serbia, Greece etc.).
4) In the fourth stage. Nation-states were
formed thanks to the disintegration of the Soviet
Union. Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia. (Croatia, the
Czech Republic. Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia,
Slovakia etc., 22 states)

In France, Eric Hobsbawm argues the French
state preceded the formation of the French
people. Hobsbawm considers that the state
made the French nation, not French nationalism,
which emerged at the end of the 19th century,
the time of the Dreyfus Affair.
At the time of the 1789 French Revolution, only
half of the French people spoke some French,
and 12-13% spoke it "fairly", according to
Hobsbawm.
Is the process of forming a national
state inevitable?

Yes, that is an essential part of the
modernization of European society.
No, it si not necesery?
Westphalian system
The idea of a nation state is associated with the rise of
the modern system of states, often called the
"Westphalian system" in reference to the Treaty of
Westphalia (1648).
The balance of power, which characterizes that system,
depends for its effectiveness upon clearly defined,
centrally controlled, independent entities, whether
empires or nation states, which recognize each
other's sovereignty and territory.
The Westphalian system did not create the nation state,
but the nation state meets the criteria for its component
states.
Nationalism as a form of politics. A
nationalist argument.
There exists a nation with an explicit and
peculiar character.
The interests and values of this nation
take prioritiy over all other interests and
values.
The nation must be as independet as
posisible.
Power, in the modern world, is principally
about control of the state.

John Breuilly identifies three different functions
performed by nationalist ideas:
a) cordination, the use of nationalist ideas to
promote the idea of common interest amongst
a number of elites;
b) mobilization to generate suport for political
movement from diferent social groups;
c) legitimacy to justify the goals of the political
movement to build the national-state.
Globalization
It has been speculated by proponents of
globalization that the concept of a nation
state may disappear.
Such ideas are sometimes expressed
around concepts of a world government
and global democracy.
Ideology of Globalization (Manfred
Steger)
a) the spread of free-market capitalism creates
the impression that it is completely natural,
b) no one managed globalization,
c) globalization benefits all,
d) globalization contributes to the spread of
democracy in the world (democracy and the
free market are synonymous),
e) globalization requires war against terrorism
Contemporary changes are
weakening the nation-state?
Capitalism, now become global, transnational,
post-industrial, informational, consumerist,
neoliberal and restructured, is undermining the
nation-state its macroeconomic planning, its
collectivist welfare state, its citizens sense of
collective identity, its general caging of
social life.
New global limits, especially environmental and
population threats, producing perhaps a new
risk society, have become too broad and too
menacing to be handled by the nation-state
alone.

we are witnessing the stirrings of a new
transnational civil society, social
movements for peace, human rights and
environmental and social reform which are
becoming truly global.
Can contemporary capitalism have the
same effects on all countries?




A) State institutions, stille provide
necessary conditions for social existence:
like economic, ideological and military
institutions.
How great is its threat to the nation-state?
And just how global and/or transnational
is it?


After all, more than 80 per cent of world production is
still for the domestic national market.
The national economy is presumably considerably less
integrated than the statistic suggests especially in
backward countries and bigger advanced countries like
the USA.
The ownership, of multinational corporations (including
banks, mutuals and insurance ) remain
disproportionately in their home state, and they still
lean on it for human capital (education),
communications infrastructures and economic
protectionism.
Clash of civilizations
In the 1993 Foreign Affairs article, Huntington
writes:
It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of
conflict in this new world will not be primarily
ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions
among humankind and the dominating source of
conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the
most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal
conflicts of global politics will occur between nations
and groups of different civilizations. The clash of
civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault
lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of
the future.
25
Typologies of
nationalism

The conceptual language of
nationalism
Still refers to unsteady mixture of ideas...unsuitable
for clear analytical thought.
nationalism is a category of practice, as well as a
category of analysis.
we need a map of the terrain.
3 conceptual languages:
Primordialism, situationalism and constructivism
Instinct, interest,
ideology
Nodal points
Different stories on:
The relationship between ethnicity and
nationalism,
the rise of nation-states,
Problematic character of contemporary nationalist
politics

26
The conceptual language of
nationalism
Primordialism:
Nation is based upon a natural, organic community, with natural
rights to self-determination,
It defines the identity of its members feeling of innate and
emotionally powerful attachment to it,
The only authentic nationalism is ethnic nationalism
Ethnic community claims common ancestry
ethnic community constitutes an ethical community
socio-bilogical selfish-gene explanation or innate power of
cultural affinities
another primordial explanation is perennial socialization
Strategy of showing itself as self-evident
27
The conceptual language of
nationalism
Situationalism:
ethnic and national ids. are resources employed by groups of
individuals for the pursuit of their common interests,
utility of ethnicity and nationalism, and the form which they
take, will vary in response to changing situations,
Modernist variant: n-s emerged because they were useful
economic units for the earlier stages of industrialisation,
For the self-realization it is useful to ally with others in
funcitional aggregation
The general assumption: beneficial and equal interactions with
others are likely to lead individuals to identify with the
interactive community.
Both ethnicity and nation refer to the political defence of
rational attachments to the interactive community
Problems in explanation: prejudice, national features,
conformism







28
The conceptual language of
nationalism Constructivism:
N.Id. is constructed on the basis of ideological frameworks which
offer simplistic formulas of identiy, and diagnoses of contemporary
problems, to otherwise confused individuals
It denies that nations are real substantive entities,
the perception by those involved that their nations are real is a
form of ideological consciousness
N.Id. is contingent
one of mechanisms
labels rarely freely or consciously chosen,
nor are they usually constructed in isolation.
Why is it so successful in its ideological support?
offer individuals the ideological myths of ancestry, kinship,
permanence and home,
Attenuation and disruption of face-to-face communities

.








29
Are there two nationalisms?
Prpi (2004): Territorial spreading of the nation-state occured as the
corruption of its original idea of the state founded on the law.
Good-civic and bad-ethnocultural nationalism?
Is nationalism a Janus who wears almost everywhere two faces;
and you have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you despise
the other?
Ethnocultural (integral, organic, ascriptive, exclusive or
radical) = intrinsically authoritarian and collectivist
Civic (liberal,political, social or voluntarist) = at least
potentially democratic and individualistic.
How the distinction has been employed in the literature?
Problems with the way in which it has been linked to the
liberal-illiberal dichotomy?





30
The distinction between
ethnocultural and civic
nationalisms
Civic nationalism?
A sense of community which is focused on the belief that residence in
a common territorial homeland, commitment to its state and civil
society institutions, generate a distinctive national character and civic
culture, such that all citizens, irrespective of their diverse ancestry,
comprise a community in progress, with a common destiny.
distinction between the two is difficult because both forms in their
mythology use the language of the family
Distinction rational-irrational started with Marx.
Apparent exeptions?
Most nationalisms contain ingredients of both the civic and ethnocultural
forms






31
The distinction between
ethnocultural and civic
nationalisms
Partly based on:
on the distinction between irrational and rational attachments
Primordial character of community vs. voluntaristic community of

equal sovereign citizens
on the allegedly liberalising impact of the middle classes
on a distinction between reactive and self-generated identities
A reformulation:
Nationalism which is reactive in origin, and which is articulated by a
marginalised group, is more likely to emerge in an illiberal form;
but such illiberalism is not fixed, since it depends upon how nationalist
lites portray the nations enemies.







32
Modernistic constructivist
approaches:
imagined communities
and
invented traditions
33
Umut zkirimly (2010)
modernistic interpretations
Common denominators:
modernity of nationalisms and nations
Nationalism precedes, instigates or creates the
nations
Socio-cultural and political transformations
theories
Benedict Anderson (1936 - )
Eric Hobsbawm (1917 2012)
Ernest Gellner (1925 1995)
34
Benedict Anderson
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (1983)
Nationality and nationalism are cultural artefacts of a particular kind.
how they have come into being?
in what ways their meanings have changed over time?
why they command such profound emotional legitimacy?
It is an imagined political community and imagined as both
inherently limited and sovereign (6).
Imagined
Limited
Sovereign
Community


35
Benedict Anderson
Conditions of emergence?
Gradual decline of religious community and dynastic realm from
the 17th century
Explorations and contact with the non-western world
Gradual decay of the sacred latin language
Christian conception of time (symultaneity) was replaced by the
idea of homogenous empty time
New imagination is expressed in novels and newspapers
Mass consumption of the newspapers mass ceremony
print-capitalism
Created unified fields of exchange and communication below
Latin and above the spoken vernaculars.
Gave a new fixity to language which further helped to build the
image of antiquity of the nation.
Created new languages-of-power
Rise of the official nationalisms

36
Eric Hobsbawm
Political transformations
Nations and nationalisms are products of social engineering
invented traditions?
a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly
accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to
inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition,
which automatically implies continuity with the past
Fabrication of the nation existence in the past
peek of invented traditions in the period from 1870 to 1914
3 major mechanisms: primary education, public ceremonies and
the mass production of public monuments
Distinction: the political duties of citizens to the nation override all
other obligations.


37
Eric Hobsbawm
Nations and nationalism are dual
phenomena:
constructed essentially from above, but which
cannot be understood unless also analysed
from below, that is in terms of the
assumptions, hopes, needs, longings and
interests of ordinary people, which are not
necessarily national and still less nationalist
But, the views and needs of ordinary
people are not easy to discover.
How would you do that?



38
Ernest Gellner
Nations: invented in particular socio-cultural context.
Nationalism is primarily a political principle which holds that the
political and the national unit should be congruent.
In most of human history political units were not organized along
nationalist principles.
boundaries of city-states, feudal entities or dynastic empires
rarely coincided with those of nations.
Ethnic origins of the rulers in pre-modern times was not
important for the ruled.
How and why did this happen?


39
Ernest Gellner
Crucial: the relationship between power and culture
hunter-gatherer stage: no state no room for nationationalism
Agro-literate societies: complex system of fairly stable statuses
Industrial societies: a high culture pervades the whole of society,
defines it, and needs to be sustained by the polity
Need for impersonal, context-free communication and
a high level of cultural standardization.
Society is based on the idea of perpetual growth continuous
transformation of the occupational structure
Egalitarianism and specialization
The imperative of exo-socialization is the main clue to why state and
culture must now be linked, whereas in the past their connection was
thin, fortuitous, varied, loose, and often minimal. That is what
nationalism is about.




40
Psychoanalytic and
deconstructive
readings of the
Nation
41
Nation and national identity
Nation: socio-political formation
Identity constructions contingent, socially produced
Paradox: it is construed, not natural, but national attachments and
identifications resist fluidity
Strong psychic investment
L. explanation: 3 fundamental orders of experience
Symbolic: social discourse
Imaginary: idealistic pictures
Real: beyond comprehension
42
Culture, language,
religion, history,
territory, ...
Collective body, national
being
Indescribable, sublime
object of enjoyment,
Agalma
Jouissance = sense of fullness
Impossible goal as permanent condition experienced as loss
produces desire to attain it again
Fulfillment: repetitively promised in political discourse in various forms
(good life, just society, diff. utopias)
Partial jouissance thats not it feeling
Failure to attain full identity and permanent (impossible) enjoyment is
transposed and projected into disturbing fantasy of the theft of
enjoyment.
The Other is accused for excessive enjoyment.
43
National identification in war?
all relations get distorted and national identif. prevails
Elaine Scarry - the motives which usually trigger war are not linked to
the inner logic of the war itself.
The war: contest over who will be quicker to inflict injury on the other.
True aim: to destroy the very way the enemy perceives itself, the
way it forms its identity.
by destroying the way people imagine their homeland (fantasy)
By inflicting wounds, torture, rape...
the aim is also to shatter the fantasy
structure of the individual
44
Creation and transgenerational
transmissions of traumas
Trauma produce: pain, sense and memory of loss, victimization,
exploatation and images of enemies
Abraham and Torok (1986, 1994); Derrida (1999) could assume
the form of phantom or spectre
When?
When we refuse to mourn.
Introject the loss and work-trough the trauma
Incorporate the lost body and act-out
Why to mourn at all? Why is this process of such importance?
Mourning is constitutive for the subject
Melancholia
45
Theory of the Crypt
constituted in the Self whenever the process of mourning is unsuccessful.
a foreign body inside of the Ego, created through the process of
incorporation
How is created the crypt?
Demetaphorization and objectivation
Preservative repression
The purpose of such cryptic incorporation?
To stay the same...
Another condition for cripts to be created:
Love objects doings are the shameful secret
46
Transgenerational phantom
It passes from the ancestors unconscious to the offsprings and works like
a ventriloquist
Haunting is transgenerational
Subjects are phantom carriers
Phantoms doesnt have its own crypt.
Are these phenomena discernable at the collective level?
Sarah Henstra (2009) - group psychology is strongly aligned with the
structure of aggrieved subject
National identity as affective structure
Double identification: with a leader and a group
Internally directed violence is similar to the melancholic ego
Nat. feeling itself is constituted on melancholic desire
47
War on Terror as refusal to
mourning
Judith Butler (2004) Precarious life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence
The place of violence in such relation?
In the WoT violence, excluded humans, such as civilian enemy
casualties are considered as unreal
No obituaries for the war casualties that the USA inflicts
Violence itself is derealized through prohibition of certain images,
disavowals and suppresion of dissent
What is encrypted in this case?
Sense of First Worldliness
where is in this example of transgenerational phantom?
48
Beyond the Nation and
nationalism?
Nation: analytical concept vs. naturalized concept
Brubaker (2004):
We need to break, for example, with the seemingly obvious and
uncontroversial point that ethnic conflict involves conflict between ethnic
groups.
How to do that?
Nation has a performative character. By invoking them we evoke them,
summon them, call them into being.
We should try to account for the ways in which the reification and
crystalization of group feeling can work

49
How to go beyond groupism?
8 basic points for overcoming:
1. Rethinking Ethnicity - in relational, processual, dynamic,
eventful, and disaggregated terms
2. The Reality of Ethnicity as social construction
3. Groupness as Event contingent variable
4. Differentiate Groups from Categories
5. Group-Making as Project
6. Differentiate Groups from Organizations
7. Constitutive role of Framing and Coding
8. Ethnicity as Cognition
50
Old and New
Nationalisms
51
Nationalism, Old and
New
52
Historical time of Nationalism
Nation-state is a West European invention?
Late 18th to mid 19th century nat. movements
Products of the long 19th century (1775 1914) and short 20th
century (1914 1991)
Before?
Natio something completely different
Tribe
traditional communities of erstwhile strangers (universities,
monasteries, military...)
From the 16th century aristocratic ruling class or persons of
learning (intelectuals)
After?
53
54
The Political Unconscious
in Croatia and the EU:

Mladen Dolar (1990)
Can one venture to say that Yugoslavia is
the Schauplatz of the European unconscious,
or that the unconscious is structured like
Yugoslavia? (p.1)

- Is this applicable to Croatia as well?
- The Political Uncoscious (Fredric Jameson)
55
to explore cultural production as a symptom of
political, societal and historical processes
application to the field of political production,
through conspiracy theories
Function of CTs:
a cognitive mapping of relations between friends and foes
ideological imagination of wider functioning of the political
field
AIM:
to explore main political antagonisms
ideologemes of the movement of the return to Europe
Parallelism between CTs and societal orders ?
their reproduction after integration into the EU
56
Political Unconscious
57
Political Unconscious
a guiding metaphor : Freudian hierarchical model for
exploration of society and history
therapist: speach hidden manifestations of the

Unconscious
Jameson: cultural artifacts modes of production
Texts as psychiatric patients
Manifest narrative effectivelly mediates latent or
unconscious Real that is expressed in the relationship of
the text with the History.
58
Political Unconscious
History: Real and narrative
Real history: as the Lacanian Real absent
cause
..a process without thelos or a subject...a
seamless web, a single inconceivable and
transindividual process
Not directly available, only through mediating
forms, such as narrative
Access to the Real History takes place through its
narrativization in the political unconcious
59
Political Unconscious
History: Real and narrative
Consequences for Marxist conception of the
relationship between the base and
superstructure
MODE OF PRODUCTION
OR STRUCTURE
CULTURE
IDEOLOGY
THE JURIDICAL
THE POLITICAL
THE ECONOMIC
RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION
FORCES OF PRODUCTION
Absent Cause
60
Levels of the political
unconscious
3 concentric frames for interpretation in phases
1. Political history in the cronology of relevant occurences
2. Societal order as a space of antagonisms
3. General history as a sequence of modes of production

1. The text a single cultural artifact as a simbolic act in
the political context
- the imaginary resolution of some Real
contradiction
2. Single texts from the 1
st
level are parts of wider colective dialogue
between classes (ruling and oppressed)
- dialogues produce ideologemes
3. Modes of production - as total societal orders
- every social formation consists in the
simultaneous overlay and coexistence of several
modes of production
- the object of analysis is cultural revolution
61
Horizons of the political unconscious in
Croatia
(1) Tudjmans speach in November 1996.
CT Of the Black, Yellow, and Green Devils
imaginary mapping of the political antagonism
for legitimating its own position of power and imagining its own political
party as an exclusive protector of national identity
victory over enemies is promissed for the future the romantic vision of
functioning of political history
The close political context: demonstrations for local radio
The Reason: peculiar interpretation of the EU politics toward
Western Balkans as a new dictate for integration
further relocation of Croatia out of CE.
Consequence: Article 135. par. 2. to the Constitution and
strenghtening of isolation politics
62
(2) main antagonism: integration vs. fragmentation
particular CTs comprise wider ideological debate around the
ideologeme of YU
signifier by which either/or against which is considered
(de)legitimation of the political community througout the 80-ies
until today
since the disintegration of SFRY till today:
Antagonism: integration vs. fragmentation:
politico-symbolical escape from the Balkans in

(Central) Europe
Steps: state independence + war victory + EU
To analyse such bipolar oppositions Jameson uses Greimas
semiotic square
Horizons of the political unconscious in
Croatia
63
(2) main antagonism: integration vs. fragmentation
Independence Integration
Non-independence Non-integration
EU
Regional
approach
Remaining
in the
Balkans
Political
isolation
Horizons of the political unconscious in
Croatia
64
(3) ideologeme of YU was effective in different societal
orders, with the potential of reproduction
How to determine dominant modes of production and
ways of their symbolization?
1980-1990: increasingly dysfunctional self-managing
socialism
1990-2000: authoritarian national capitalism
2000- : late capitalism with detrimental mechanisms
of past social formations
How the dominant structural features of these
formations have been realized at the level of CTs?
Horizons of the political unconscious in
Croatia
65
80-ies:
the termination of Tito - a unifying symbol and supreme arbiter in
political issues
Deep economic crisis, disfunctioning of institutions, unresolved
social problems,
increased social and interethnic tensions
Party elites fragmented themselves according to republic-national
lines
Cleavage between centralization-decentralization of the state and
according to the need for improving market economy (South-
East vs. North West)
The paralelism of conspiratorial texts and main antagonisms and
processes in collapsing of societal order
Tito vs. Great forces and Party factions
behind-the-scenes governance of alienated centers of power
Counter-revolutionary critiques of soc. past vs. White Book
The Memorandum of SASA 1986.
Horizons of the political unconscious in
Croatia
66
90-ies: features of autoritarian national capitalism
Arbitrary and autocratic rule of the President
Criminal privatization and tycoonization of economy
Clientelism
Abuse of secret services
Attempts to control the media
Long-lasting isolationism in international politics
Nationalism, tolerance of neo-ustashism and frequent use of
the logic of inner and outer enemies
Mode of production of enemies perpetuated itself, especially during
the first years in 2000ies
Gradual weakening of such conspiratorial subtext
Horizons of the political unconscious in
Croatia
67
2000-ies:
Democratic consolidation
Strenghtening of institutions
Approaching the EU
criminal privatization of the state for party aims
Spill-over of disatisfaction with political elites
into general mistrust and cynicism
Latent fear of EU

Horizons of the political unconscious in
Croatia
68
The comparison of the EU with Yugoslavia might be rough,
but the similarities could not be overlooked
Starting from differences in the development of individual
constituent parts, the fact that the EU has also a problem
with deciding what is democratic: one person one vote or
one country one vote.
In the EU, many, clearly natural problems, are also covered
up with some European brotherhood and unity
Even the EU exists and expands itself by relying on
democratic deficit. When people are against something, e.g.
constitution, bypasses are invented, such as the Lisbon
Treaty, which replaces the constitution.
Horizons of the political unconscious in
Croatia
69

The biggest danger for the EU is exactly what I call the
Yugoslav syndrome: it is a conviction that everyone is
exploited.
That conviction grows with the worsening of the economic
situation; in Yugoslavia this conviction had been growing
since the eighties. At the end we Slovenians had exploited the
Croats; the Croats exploited the Serbs, the Serbs the
Slovenians. Because of that, a long-lasting crisis is the most
dangerous thing for the EU.


Horizons of the political unconscious in
Croatia
Dangerous analogies: YU and EU
1. Sentiment of being exploited
Fear of Grexit
domino effect
Cyprus
Agambens
Latin
EmpireOscar Lafontaine



BO: hard-working, law-abiding North vs. lazy, licentious
South
cunning North
vs. nave South
70
Dangerous analogies: YU and EU
1. Sentiment of being exploited
2. Common internal logic: from an
emancipative federalization to an
existential crisis
a) Lack of democratic participation
b) Indiffernce and repression of the fundamental dilemmas
of political community
c) During the Cold War democratic processes were slowed
down
d) Economic problems acompanied with the memory of
past ideological and national conflicts
e) Substantial differences in economic development
f) Lack of efficient mechanisms of collective action
g) Ideological deadlock of federalism vs. confederalism

71
3. YU as an embodiment of the
convergence between socialism and
capitalism
EU as a synthesis of the energy and
freedom that come from liberalism with
the stability and welfare that come
from social democracy
- a combination of democracy and
capitalism
- alternatives in the multi-polar world
- absolute deprivation, especially youth

72
Dangerous analogies: YU and EU
Predicting Future of the EU
Simon Hix (2011) three possible
scenarios
20% possible scenario Real Crisis
60% possible scenario Muddling
through
Most unlikely scenario Democratic EU
73
The End of the Nation?
74
Nation-state as a model?
After 1945 its sovereignty has been
outreached by transnational power networks
of global capitalism and postmodernity?
EU as an evidence of n. sovereignty
fragmentation?
Is this process global or somwhere more
expressed?
Different reasons for losing strenght?
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Impact of globalization
What is the inner fabric of globalization?
Economic internationalization
World-wide division of labour
Transnationalization of trade, production and finance
Internationalization of constitutional law
Transport and communication revolutions
Transformation of geopolitics
In this way the power of global culture, global
communication, the global market and related factors,
including that which has been called postmodern, penetrate
through the imagined boundaries of nation state,
conditioning and shaping the national will and constructing
the perspective of the possible and desirable from which its
relative power to exert sovereignty will be excercised
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Impact of globalization
What is the inner fabric of globalization?
New problems arise which demand global solutions
Individuals become more and more mobile migrations
Global interdependency in economy, politics and culture
Culture and capitalism merge into postmodern
hyperspace.
Metaphor of postmodernity: Hotel Bonaventura


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National Culture and Language
For how long will they be able to resist the pressure of globalization?
Will they be able to survive without the protective umbrella of the nation
state?
National state is just one of a number of possible organizations
needed for the preservation of national culture.
Ulf Hannerz (1993): several scenarios of gradual
enlargement
of human ecumene:
1. Global homogenization annihilation under the pressure of

western culture values, beliefs...
2. Saturation in chain of succeding generations periphery absorbs
elements of the western c. and gradually
disintegrates
3. Corruption periphery adopts products of mass, rather then
higher culure and distorts received
values in order to adjust them to local ways of
life.
4. Maturation peripheries develop their own cultures by incorporat.
elements of metropolitan c. but only after its adaptation to local c.

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