Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Peter Učen: Approaching National Populism
Peter Učeň NatíonaIísm UncIeR SuspECT All normative statements in favour of nationalism share the conception of the nation as an ethical community. “The discourse of nationalism asserts that humanity is divided into distinct nations, each with its own separate past, present and destiny. Human beings can only fulfil themselves if they belong to a national community, the membership of which remains superior to all other forms of belonging - familial, gender, class, religious, regional, and so on” (Özkirimli 2005, 2). A discussion of the two main theoretical traditions explaining the emergence of nationalism, that is ‘ethnicisť and ‘modemist’ ones, falls beyond the scope of this text. Our approach in this text remains within the modernist school7 exemplified by the famous Gellner’s definition of nationalism as “a political doctrine which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent” (Gellner 1983, 1, our emphasis). The definition calls for thinking of the ways how the congruence can be achieved in practice. Generally speaking, ‘adjusting boundaries to the ethnic’ and ‘filling boundaries with the appropriate ethnic’ come out as the two basic paths. The first path evokes the processes such as redrawing boundaries, separation, irredentism, or territorial autonomy, if none of the previous is attainable. The second one refers to the creation of a unified nation by assimilating ethnic minorities. This way of treating nationalism could be very useful for the sake of the project, along with another definition of nationalism, which is practical and thus amenable to operationalisation. Jonathan Hearn suggests that ‘‘[njationalism is the making of combined claims, on behalf of population, to identity, to jurisdiction and to territory” (Hearn 2006, 11, original emphasis). The author further specifies that one can speak of nationalism when all three kinds of claims are present. Articulated by “smaller social groups in the name of a larger population”, the claims seek to evoke common identity (on the basis of biology, descent, culture, language, history, religion). They attempt at “translating identity into laws” on a specified territory (all quotations Hearn 2006, 11). “The crux is that there needs to be a real place where jurisdiction can secure identity” (Heam 2006, 12). We find it useful that operationalisation embraced in this project be based on the logic of the claims in the name of population: who makes the claims, on behalf of which group, and what is their nature. Another useful tool of analysing nationalism is relational typologies which treat nationalism according to the way nationalists define their relationship to other (not only) ethnic groups. Brubaker (cited in Heam 2006, 122-123). 20
