ABSTRACT
Anthony Smith, a proponent of the ethnosymbolist approach, argues that social constructionists (a) dramatically overstate the degree of rupture between the (supposedly) exclusively modern nation and the forms of social life that preceded it, and (b), as a consequence of (a), are unable to explain the intensity of mass support for the nationalist project. As to (a), Smith concedes that most (but not all) nations are modern, post-eighteenth-century realities-prior to that time most people lived within, and were loyal to, small communities, tribal or otherwise, that may or may not have been parts of large empires-but argues that modern nations are almost always based on sentiments and traditions that ourished for hundreds if not thousands of years-what he calls the longue durée-in those pre-national communities. is argument turns on the distinction that Smith draws between the ethnic community or what he calls the ethnie, on the one hand, and the nation on the other. He denes the ethnie as
a named human population with myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories, one or more elements of a shared culture, a link with a homeland, and a measure of solidarity, at least among elites. While ethnies share with nations the elements of common name, myths and memory,
their center of gravity is dierent: ethnies are dened largely by their ancestry myths and historical memories; nations are dened by the historic territory they occupy and by their mass, public cultures and common laws. A nation must possess a homeland; an ethnie need not-hence the phenomenon of diaspora ethnies.8
