NATIONS & NATIONALISM

Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism

Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism
13th Annual Ernest Gellner Nationalism Lecture
at London School of Economics, 16 April 2007

Professor Craig Calhoun,
President Social Science Research Council, University Professor of the Social Sciences
New York University, Visiting Professor of Sociology, Columbia University

Comment by tamilnation.org  "To those who would advocate cosmopolitanism for others, whilst holding fast to their own nation, that which Sun Yat Sen, wrote more than 80 years ago, will serve as a continuing reminder of the political reality - and the need to match their own words and deeds:

"At present, England and France are advocating a new idea which is proposed by the intellectuals. What is that idea? It is an anti nationalist idea which argues that nationalism is narrow and illiberal; it is simply an idea of cosmopolitanism.. Cosmopolitanism will cause further decadence if we leave the reality, nationalism, for the shadow, cosmopolitanism.... First let us practise nationalism; cosmopolitanism will follow." (The Triple Demism of Sun Yat Sen, 1924)

A true trans-nationalism will emerge, not by the suppression of nations but when nations flower and mature. To work for the flowering of nations is to advance the emergence of a true trans-nationalism. It is true that no people are an island unto themselves. But nationalism is not chauvinism - it becomes so only when it takes exaggerated forms and is directed to the subjugation of one nation by another."