Anthony Smith's Anti-Primordialism and Asian Nationalism

Introduction: Nationalism and the Question of Asia

Nationalism — and what makes a nation a cohesive and functioning unit — has been one of the essential questions of modern political philosophy, particularly in Asia today, where in India, China, Tibet, Japan, Vietnam, and Korea, a plurality of different regional and religious identities fight to dominate particular national territories. Anthony D. Smith is one of the most important contemporary scholars of nationalism and is the author of many books on the subject, including such classics as his 1986 The Ethnic Origins of Nations — a work of particular relevance to the region, given the frequent rhetorical role of ethnic identity in a people's claim to territory and nationhood.

According to Smith, the idea of essential ethnic origins of nations has led some scholars to treat nationalism and nations as pre-existing entities, simply waiting for recognition and validation from outside governing bodies such as the United Nations, as well as from neighboring nation-states. But the thrust of modern history suggests that nationality is fundamentally more complex. Even the idea of what is "Asia" and "Asiatic" is polymorphous and in flux, rather than something complete to be grasped in its totality through law, religion, or ideological construction.

Ideologues who identify themselves as nationalists, perennialists, modernists, and postmodernists hold very different interpretations of what constructs a nation and how the past history of peoples can and should affect present visions of national identity. But it is primarily "the manner in which they have viewed the place of ethnic history [that] has largely determined their understanding of nations and nationalism today" (Smith, 1994, 18).

Nationalist and Perennialist Approaches to Nationhood

Starkly defined nationalists stress that the role of the past is clear and unproblematic. Vietnam, for example, was always extant and simply passed into French and American hands by virtue of unjust historical circumstances. In the nationalist view, the nation of Vietnam itself was always there, as if part of some natural or truer world order, "even when it was submerged in the hearts of its members" in the military din and conflicts of a colonial past. Thus, "the task of the nationalist is simply to remind his or her compatriots of their glorious past, so that they can recreate and relive those glories" that existed before colonialism (Smith, 1994, 18). Although nationalism may have its roots in anti-colonialism and make a positive contribution to national cohesion, Smith contends that such pure nationalism must become part of a larger global ideology if post-colonial structures like Vietnam are to be integrated into the international web of economic and political relations.

For perennialist or primordial scholars, according to Smith, the notion of the nation-state is also immemorial — unchanging, though national forms may shift and particular borders may dissolve. Those scholars who posit an essential Chinese identity across a vast conglomeration of regional identities pursue a quixotic quest when they attempt to fix nationhood in such a perennial fashion. Smith contends instead that the nation exists only in human, collective minds and is not part of any natural order. A citizen can ultimately choose his or her nation — unlike a racial or ethnic classification — and even later generations can build something new on ancient ethnic foundations. Modern Japan, however homogeneous it may appear, is still more ethnically diverse than it has been in the past, despite a history of isolationism; notions of what is "Japanese" have shifted, even among those who share an unbroken ethnic heritage with their ancestors.

For the modernist, in contrast, the past is largely irrelevant in defining the nation-state, since the nation-state is always a modern rather than an ancient phenomenon. Modernists contend that nations are expressions of modern, industrial society, and to fuse nationhood to past history is anachronistic. While nationalists are free to use ethnic heritages to legally define borders, nation-building must proceed without the aid of an ethnic past draped in romantic causes. For the modernist, "nations are phenomena of a particular stage of history, embedded in purely modern conditions," such as the reaction to colonialism (Smith, 1994, 18).

Although Smith displays some sympathy for the modernist viewpoint, he would also remind its ardent advocates that notions of nationhood and ethnic cohesion in national conglomerations predate the modern rise of anti-colonialism and the assertion of ethnic, national, and regional identities under the heading of nationalism. Even before Asia became a modern regional entity with its current configuration of nation-states, the "Oriental" and the essential Japan were spoken of by Western scholars; Japanese and Chinese emperors alike asserted their nation's uniqueness — a uniqueness still advocated by scholars, economists, and laypersons on both sides of the Pacific. Like it or not, notions of ethnicity and nationhood are real, however ever-changing, because they affect perceptions of the self, the citizen, and what one is as a global citizen.

Modernist Critiques and the Limits of Ethnic History

Smith instead favors a postmodernist approach to nationalism — one that treats the past of a region as more problematic. There is no single national identity or even a single nationalism; rather, the present creates the past in its own image, and the damage done by colonialism affects how membership in a nation shapes one's perceptions today. Though the borders and current constructions of nations are modern and the product of modern cultural conditions, liberating nationalists freely draw on elements from the ethnic past, and the invention and mixing of traditions is always taking place when a new — or supposedly ancient — political community is being formed.

None of these formulations seems entirely or finally satisfactory to Smith, however (Smith, 1994, 19). He notes that despite the preferences of scholars, a populace quite often demands answers to questions of what a nation is, and thus "nationalists have a vital role to play in the construction of nations ... not as culinary artists or social engineers, but as political archaeologists rediscovering and reinterpreting the communal past in order to regenerate the community" (Smith, 1994, 19).

Smith states that ethnicities are constructed of perceived cultural attributes — memory, value, myth, and symbolism — that quite often transcend empirical fact, yet still carry a pervasive sense of "the past" into the living present. There is a complex relationship between an active national present and an often-ancient ethnic heritage, between the defining ethnic past and its modern nationalist authenticators and appropriators. A scholar must always evaluate any national group's conventionally held or stridently advocated wisdom that their particular nation is unique or that their populace is uniquely set apart from others — but taking that sense of specialness or significance into consideration may be vital when constructing a livable government between warring peoples, and when understanding a particular sub-group's sense of itself as oppressed.