Ethno Nationalism: A Brief Introduction

Abstract

Human beings have been engaged with the idea of nation and nation formation from time immemorial. The paper traces the work of Anthony Smith who is the major contributor in the primordialist school of thought. He raises some fundamental questions like “why are men and women willing to die for their countries? Why do they identify so strongly with their nations?” Anthony Smith is credited with developing the “ethno symbolist theory”, which presents novel ideas about ethnies as the basis of nation formation. Smith’s work stands between “modernist theories defending the recent, invented and constructed nature of nation and nationalism and perinnialist theories emphasizing the permanence of nations”.

key words: primordialist ethnies modernist nationalism