Talk:Nationalism

Further reading section

Hi everyone. The list of references in the 'Further reading' section has become quite long, and only a few of the works listed there are what you might call 'key texts' on nationalism as such. I think that we should remove all of those sources which are simply relevant to the study of nationalism, and institute a convention of only including works that would be considered essential reading for a wide audience looking to learn more about nationalism itself. The rest can be listed in other articles that have a more specific focus. – SJL 17:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree strongly with SJL. Indeed, I would go further: if a text is "essential reading," then it should be cited already in the article, and thus in the "References." I would vote for deleting the "further reading" section altogether. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:47, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I've trimmed this section significantly. It is now divided into two sub-sections: 'General', which includes some key sources that I did not remove and should be incorporated into the text; and 'Reference works', which includes a short list of reference works, such as three encyclopedias of nationalism, that I think are good additions to this article but would not be suitable for incorporation into the text. – SJL 03:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Good stuff. Some of these references are (kinda sorta) in the text already. I started moving things around. More to be done here... --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 04:36, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

'Types of nationalism' section

I have moved most of the content from the 'Types of nationalism' section, which was quite long, into its own article. – SJL 00:13, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

'Theoretical literature' section

I have moved the 'Theoretical literature' section to here (click 'show' in the box below to see it). The information is useful from an editor's perspective, but it should be incorporated into the the text as prose and not just listed there (please note, however, that some of the summaries are inaccurate and should be double-checked before they are included). – SJL 16:45, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Outline of proposed revision

Hello everyone. I recently replaced the lead to this article as the first step in a complete revision that I am proposing with the following outline. Bolded titles indicate the main sections, and the others are potential sub-headings. Please keep in mind that I do not intend this to be an exhaustive list.

• Lead
• Overview
  • Ideology
  • Sentiment
  • Form of culture
  • Social movement
• Origins
  • Modernization
  • Popular sovereignty
  • Nations and nation-building
• Types of nationalism
• Conflict
  • War and other violent conflict
  • Sub-state nationalism and separatism
• Everyday nationalism
• Key issues
  • Immigration and social diversity
  • Gender
• Criticism

My suggestion is that we simply work our way down the list, starting with 'Overview' now that the lead has already been rewritten. If you are unsure of where to find research material for a given section, I can provide a number of suggestions. I look forward to your comments – SJL 12:22, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Lead is no good, please see WP:Lead Klichka (talk) 04:15, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

The Lead should summarize the whole article!

The first paragraph should always summarize the whole article, this is an awful mess. The first part before the TOC was a long winded unreadable mess. Your first paragraph is the hook where you tell people the brief gist of it. This is how a lot of stuff goes and the ball was utterly dropped here. Klichka (talk) 04:01, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

"The article should begin with a straightforward, declarative sentence that, as briefly as possible, provides the reader who knows nothing at all about the article's subject with the answer to two questions: "What (or who) is it?" and "Why is this subject notable?".[2]" WP:LEAD

You failed to identify what it is exactly. I still don't know what nationalism is or why its different from say communism or cosmopolitanism. Klichka (talk) 04:05, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

First, please don't be sanctimonious, and review WP:CIVIL before making any further comments. Second, if you read the above posts carefully, you will see that in this case the lead is not intended to summarize the rest of the article, which I think should be rewritten (not least because it is almost wholly uncited, but most importantly because it is nearly all wrong). I am well aware that this is not the way things are usually done, but sometimes that's the way things have to be done. I've taken this approach because I don't have time to rewrite the whole article at the moment, but I wanted to provide a brief overview that could also serve as a template.

Regarding the content itself, I think that your complaints are unfounded. You claim here and on my talk page that I have not defined nationalism, and that I should be able to do so in one or two lines. As a professional political scientist who specializes in nationalism studies, I disagree, but you don't have to take my word for it – read any of the books that I have cited in the introduction (or any other scholarly book on nationalism, for that matter) and you will see that the definition of nationalism is in fact highly contested, and that the first line of this article reflects the wide range of connotations that the term can have: "The term nationalism can refer to an ideology, a sentiment, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation." The second and third paragraphs go into more detail, particularly on nationalism as an ideology, but a full exposition belongs in the body of the article. Accordingly, I hope that you will consider improving the body of the article if you know enough about the subject to do so. – SJL 05:01, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the article should be split if there is enough content on each aspect of nationalism. You make an interesting arguement for splitting it up. I am not meaning to be sanctimonious, I'm just stating that I believed the article failed to match the goals of being concise and contingent. I personally think that the article should be set to an archive of some sort or there should be an old version link in this discussion and then it should be cut down signifigantly so it can be rewritten. In software engineering sometimes it becomes impossible to maintain old code (esp when it was written by someone else) and it needs to be destroyed and rewritten from scratch. This seems to be majorly a case here.

So I see two paths for revising this article: Out with the old and rebuild it with greater control so the article doesn't become an entire mess. Or it could be retrofit, retrofitting would keep the content mostly, but its going to be very hard to work with and it will look complete even when it isn't ready at any point and may encourage the bad parts to tag along. I'm not an expert on nationalism so this is not my choice here as to how to procede, but I personally think reducing it to a stub and rebuilding will be better since it will encourage the article to be built up properly and if you are willing to dedicate your time I suggest ripping it down if you have the people who are dedicated to rebuilding it. I'd help, but I know absolutely nothing about nationalism. (Is jingoism one definition of nationalism?) Klichka (talk) 19:45, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

It would be a mistake to create separate articles for each different connotation that nationalism can have. Variability is one of its essential characteristics, and each sense of the term is importantly interrelated. I agree that the body of the article should be completely rewritten but, as the author of the lead, I unsurprisingly think that it does a good job of introducing the subject (though, of course, it is not supposed to stand alone).

My long-term intention is to lead a complete rewrite of the article, but I don't have the time to do that right now and will not for several months. It wouldn't bother me if most of the body were removed, but my sense is that it's better to have something to replace it with than to take the article back to a stub. If nobody objects, however, I am willing to go through the article and remove everything that I don't think would remain in a well-informed rewrite.

As for jingoism, it is not synonymous with nationalism, but it is related: it is a term used to describe strong support for war in the name of nationalism or patriotism. – SJL 04:07, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Walescw.jpg

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The word "often" in the lead

I'm sorry if this has been discussed before, but ... the lead states that nationalism commonly leads to war. To me, the problem is the word "commonly" - it leads one to believe that nationalists only want war, and impies that nationalists want war. I think that this is misleading, and should be removed. Thanks, Horlo (talk) 06:52, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the sentiment, but the actual sentence says that ". . .nationalism is commonly associated with war. . .", not that nationalism commonly leads to war, and then the next paragraph says that nationalism is not inherently violent. – SJL 05:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Unverified Claims

Please could have a reference for this subjective bit of content:

"Nationalism does not necessarily imply a belief in the superiority of one race over others, but in practice, many nationalists support racial protectionism or racial supremacy. Such racism is typically based upon preference or superiority of the indigenous race of the nation, but not always."

It's the "...in practice, many..." part that is unsubstantiated; the "...typically..." bit also requires some kind of reference to support the assertion, rather than just tagging on a casual and vague disclaimer of "...,but not always" at the end.

I'm not debating the content so much as the quality aspect... it just comes across as amateurish and a bit adolescent.

The other issue is that there's an implicit assumption here that we all know and agree what "race" is. Frankly, I don't know what it is... it's such an anachronistic and ill-defined term that I don't see how using it in a paragraph like this can impart any useful or meaningful information. I don't know what: "racial protectionism"; "racism"; "indigenous race (of the nation)" means in this or any context. I suspect there is an American-English v British-English problem of definitions here, as I believe that in America terms like "ethnicity" have prescribed meanings; whereas, in Britain, "ethnicity" would definitely be a more precise and correct term to describe what I think is meant by the term "race" in this paragraph (or "superiority" for that matter!).

Like it says at the foot of this edit page: "Cite your sources"! [[212.159.117.182 (talk) 01:07, 3 January 2009 (UTC)MacDaddy]]

nationalism is love for one's nation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.22.206.71 (talk) 16:05, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Nationalism and Far right

I was told that "Far right" means "Nationalism" rather than economical freedom. What is the connection/difference between articles/categories Nationalism and Far right? Now it's accidental (or based on prejudices).Xx236 (talk) 13:57, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

There is no necessary connection between nationalism and ring-wing politics, but it is common for right-wing politicians to take nationalist positions (against immigration, for example). Nationalism isn't the opposite of "economical freedom", though; you might be thinking of protectionism, which is often justified on nationalist grounds. – SJL 17:27, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Categories Far right parties and Nationalistic parties include similar parties. The distinction is accidental or based on prejudices. Xx236 (talk) 08:42, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but I'm really not sure what you're trying to say. If you're talking about Wikipedia's organizational categories, this isn't the place to do it; you should post on the talk page of the category (or categories) that you're concerned about. – SJL 15:47, 20 February 2009 (UTC)