Nations and Nationalism

This thoughtful and penetrating book, addressed to political scientists, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists, interprets nationalism in terms of its social roots, which it locates in industrial social organization. Professor Gellner asserts here that a society's affluence and economic growth depend on innovation, occupational mobility, the effectiveness of the mass media, universal literacy, and an all-embracing educational system based on a shared, standard idiom. These factors, taken together, govern the relationship between culture and the state. Political units that do not conform to the principle, "one state, one culture" feel the strain in the form of nationalistic activity.

Ernest Gellner taught at the LSE from 1949 until 1984, when he became William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. At the end of his life, in 1995, he was Director of the Centre for the Study of Nationalism, part of the Central European University. A full bibliography of his many publications can be found in this book. John Breuilly is Professor of Nationalism and Ethnicity at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Book publications include Austria, Prussia and Germany 1806-1871 (2002), Nationalismus and moderner Staat. Deutschland and Europa (1999), The Formation of the First German Nation-State, 1800-1871 (1996), and Nationalism and the State (second edition, 1993).