ABSTRACT
The study of nationalism poses a real challenge to many of the less sophisticated assumptions which have informed the anthropological study of politics. Surveying the political wreckage of the late twentieth century, it is particularly
hard to reduce nationalism, and the suffering and sacrifice made in its name, to the kind of narrow instrumental explanations which have characterized certain strands of ‘classic’ political anthropology (Spencer 1997). A discussion of nationalism cannot avoid a discussion of power, but the power involved is not necessarily (or usually) the property of a particular individual or segment of society.To unravel the workings of nationalism, we need to look to arguments which enable us to discuss power in non-instrumental terms.The two outstanding theoretical contributions to such a discussion are those of Arendt (1970), who locates power in collective action and collective agency (and differentiates power from coercion and violence), and Foucault, for whom power is diffuse, pervasive and productive.Whatever one makes of the coherence or otherwise of Foucault’s writings on power, his work has at least had the salutary effect of disengaging the issue of power from models of instrumental action.Arendt’s ideas are part of a wider concern with democracy and public argument, and this is a connection I want to explore at the end of this chapter.
