Cultural and instrumental approaches to ethnic nationalism |
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Authors: | Hudson Meadwell |
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Institution: | Assistant Professor of Political Science , McGill University , Stephen Leacock Building, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 2T7, Canada |
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Abstract: | This article identifies a set of assumptions that underlie culturalist approaches to ethnic nationalism and it assesses these assumptions from a particular instrumentalist point of view ‐ collective‐choice theory. It is argued that cultural approaches are structuralist, leaving little room for intentional explanations and, when agent‐centred explanations are used, they are typically embedded within a moral economic theory of groups. In contrast, collective‐choice theory is intentionalist and political‐economic in orientation. From the perspective of these different approaches, the article examines a common dilemma of mobilization in nationalist movements ‐ how popular support can be mobilized by activists who, for entrepreneurial or ideological reasons, have formed a nationalist organization. Empirical illustrations are drawn from interwar Brittany and contemporary Quebec. |
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