ABSTRACT

Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism was published in 1983 as part of a series entitled "Perspectives on the Past", which sought to "discuss problems simply as problems, and not as 'history' or 'politics' or 'economics'. Bronislaw Malinowski's ideas in social anthropology significantly influenced Gellner's understanding of nationalism as a modern phenomenon, For Gellner, Malinowski's ideas helped explain why nationalists project and even invent an ancient history for their nation. The academic discipline of sociology coalesced at the turn of the twentieth century under the influence of three different thinkers: the German economist and social theorist Karl Marx, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, and the German sociologist Max Weber. The academic discipline of sociology differed from scientific examination of human biology, as well as from psychology's interpretations of individual human consciousness.