Relationship between Nationalism and Decolonization



Relationship between Nationalism and Decolonization

Introduction

Nationalism often means defining yourself in terms of common language, shared ancestry and common religion. Nationalism describes two types of phenomena such as thoughts for which members of a nation care about and those which explains that they are bound to their national identity and actions which are taken in order to achieve self determination. Nationalism collectively involves all of the factors such as cultural ties, ethnicity, common origin which are regarded as either voluntary or involuntary. It also raises questions regarding self-determination whether it must consist of all the international or domestic affairs or anything less than that. Nationalism always means different things to different people in different contexts. Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent. A wide range of diverging perspectives about the nature, evolution, and historical role of nationalism exist.

Discussion

Nationalism in Middle East

A noteworthy feature of the new scholarship on nationalism is its relative neglect of nationalism in the Arab Middle East. Only in the past few decades have empirical studies of nationalism in the Arab Middle East begun to draw from the new theoretical scholarship. The main thrust has been to cultivate a polycentric or “peripheral” perspective on nationalism, as scholars attend to the numerous regional, confessional, generational, and socioeconomic factors that have shaped many temporal and spatial variants of nationalism. As scholars trace the diverse histories of different forms of nationalism in Middle East societies, the notion of a homogeneous and hegemonic Arab nationalism so often projected by ideologues is being de centered. The genesis and evolution of nationalism is increasingly being viewed as a multifaceted process whose roots lie in the socioeconomic processes of the modern era and whose meaning extends beyond leaders to broader sectors of society. Temporally, the primary focus of much of the existing scholarship on nationalism in the Middle East has been on its genesis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century's.

A valuable collaborative volume on this early phase of the history of Middle East nationalism was published in 1991. As yet, however, there has been no work of synthesis in which the new theoretical insights have been applied to the broad range of Middle East nationalisms as they developed from the World War I period onward. Arab Middle East nationalism dominated political discourse and the aspiration for integral Arab unity seemed a realistic possibility in the 1950s and 1960s, essentialist interpretations of the phenomenon as a uniform hegemonic construct were prevalent. With the relative eclipse of pan-Arabism in the 1970s and 1980s, a more pluralist perspective emerged in which localized sub nationalisms such as territorial, communal, and state oriented are discerned as having constituted formidable alternatives to the concept of one indivisible Arab Middle East nation.

Nationalism and Ethnicity

Nationalism and ethnicity remain important political forces in the contemporary Middle East. As the power of Arab Middle East nationalism declined, it was increasingly challenged by nation state nationalism and ...