The Ethnic-Civic Dichotomy and the Explanation of National Self-Understanding

Abstract

In his paper Ethnicity as Cognition (2006), Rogers Brubaker held that cognitive psychology can enrich the understanding of the practices of categorisation that underpins ethnicity, nationhood and race. I shall argue that the philosophical debate concerning the different types of explanation in social sciences – the explanations based on reasons and the explanations based on causal mechanisms – can throw some light on this issue. To analyse beliefs requires use of both approaches. It can be shown with the classical opposition between an ethnic and a civic conception of national belonging which derives from a reason-based approach. The causal mechanism approach underlying cognitive psychology can offer alternative models accounting for national self-understanding, notably the prototype model of categorisation. I confront empirically these two theories – the ethnic civic dichotomy and the prototype model – using the issp data from 2003 and evidence the advantages and shortcomings of each theory.

The mobilisation of identities: a study on the relationship between elite rhetoric and public opinion on national identity in developed democracies

“…What is more, standard approaches to data reduction assume mutual exclusivity, when in fact ethnic and civic nationalism can be mutually reinforcing (Gellner : 53f; Smith , chapter 6; Helbling : 44–45). Some also disagree over the conceptual status of markers like language and religion, which carry both ethnic and civic content (Jayet : 74).…”

“…In practical terms, some propose continuous scales of identities with ethnic and civic conceptions of identities as their endpoints. National‐identity, then, becomes one's distance from each pole (Jayet : 76; Wright , ; Wright et al ).…”

“…Running the models including this item and excluding Bulgaria and Latvia leads to the same results. For a detailed discussion of measurement equivalence, see Heath et al, 2009; Reeskens and Hooghe ; Jayet : 74.…”

Repertoires of national boundaries in France and Germany—within‐country cleavages and their political consequences

“…Based on a multiple correspondence analysis, Jayet (: 80ff) has suggested that the main opposition within the data lies between those who use all criteria to define the boundaries of the nation and those who refuse to define membership at all, while the civic‐ethnic distinction is only secondary. Hence, according to Jayet, the major opposition between the respondents is located on different levels of overall importance rather than on differentiated evaluations of the criteria.…”

Sports and Nationalism in a Globalized World

“…One central theme in the literature on nationalism is the distinction between a civic/ democratic and primordial/ethnic nationalism, often linked to an east-west divide (Björklund 2006;Jayet 2012;Smith 2009). The east-west context could also impact sport nationalism, although it is difficult to get at this divide except in the case of the countries in the study having (more or less) geographically clear eastÀ west positions.…”