REVIEW BY JEREMY SMITH
Nations Without States: Political Communities in a Global Age
By Montserrat Guibernau
St Leonards NSW: Allen and Unwin, 1999. $43.91 (pb)
Nations Without States tackles an area that few others have been willing to touch: a comparison of stateless peoples engaged in struggle. More than this, the author, Montserrat Guibernau sympathises with the subjects of his study. He shows a degree of commitment to the conflicts he surveys that is often absent from academic writings on nationalism (and this is an academic work).
In its historical and sociological research on state formation, this is mostly a good book. Some biting criticism is warranted, however, for what it overlooks.
The starting point for this discussion is a review of the working definitions of nationalism that are in circulation in the social sciences and amongst historians.
The literature in this area operates in something like a state of denial about Marxism's contributions to a theory of nationalism. Apart from Eric Hobsbawm, Marxist writings are ignored. The classics themselves are invisible.
Consequently, many contemporary writers reinvent old definitions without realising that they are doing so. Conversely, some Marxist critics fail to recognise old Marxist formulations invented anew by wilfully neglectful contemporaries.
Guibernau repeats the former error in critical comments on Marx and in his own definition of nationalism, which looks remarkably similar to Lenin's formulations. (It should be added that he writes approvingly of Lenin's approach to the national question in the early 1920s.) The element of economic unity as a precondition of nationhood is, tellingly, missing. Interestingly, it does reappear in the detailed discussion of particular cases.
Nations Without States examines the histories of the Scots, Welsh, Basques, Catalans, Irish, Kurds, Quebecois and Native Americans. The political and military strategies pursued by movements thrown up by oppression are scrutinised.
Guibernau's approach shows significant gaps, however. Indigenous, or "fourth world", movements are neglected. Native Americans have a high profile, and the UN-patronised World Council of Indigenous Peoples is discussed (the former has a disproportionate influence over the latter). But the varying political circumstances facing other indigenous peoples are disregarded surprisingly in this tract on stateless nations. This empirical focus on Europe could be excused, except that it compromises the author's more sweeping theoretical claims.
Terrorism ("total war") is another issue. A deeper analysis is attempted here. However, crucial components are missing. The motivations for terrorism are not discussed. State terrorism appears as a separate category, but ongoing violence against stateless peoples does not figure with the prominence it should.
Also, the capacity of liberal democratic states to act in an authoritarian manner towards their disenfranchised minorities is underestimated.
Above all, the occurrence and character of political debates about strategy amongst stateless minorities are not acknowledged (a problem common to many shallow approaches in political science).
Finally, Guibernau associates himself too strongly with the globalisation paradigm. The ramifications of neo-liberalism for new states formed by stateless people (East Timor, Palestine) are conveniently overlooked in an analysis that maintains that the nation-state is defunct or declining.
In his view, the way forward for stateless peoples is to forge autonomy within existing states. This would involve an overhaul in the way that democratic states manage internal diversity. However, this might present a challenge to the world's most powerful capitalist states, which do contain organised minorities.
Where the challenge is too much of a threat, the democracy, which Guibernau hopes will deliver a new civic diversity, could rapidly evaporate. Where would the movements for self-determination go then?
In the face of such a scenario, the author seems incapable of asking the right questions, let alone providing helpful answers.