Page 27 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

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Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization
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Oppressed nationalism emerges in the process of social transformation when a par-
ticular group draws upon certain aspects of its shared historical past in order to re-
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There are both objective
spond to pressures felt within the modern world system.
and subjective factors that need to be considered in studying and understanding na-
tionalism.These factors involve cultural, social, economic, and psychological elements.
Nationalism cannot be reduced to any one of these elements. Cabral rejects simplistic
forms of economic determinism and asserts that “Culture, whatever its ideological or
idealist characteristics of its expression, is . . . an essential element of the history of a
people.... Like history, or because it is history, culture has its material base at the level
of the productive forces and the mode of production. Culture plunges its roots into
the humus of the material reality of the environment in which it develops, and it re-
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flects the organic nature of society.
To emphasize either the objective or the subjective factors reduces the complexity
of nationalism and distorts our critical understanding of this subject.Therefore, it is
necessary to look at the dynamic interplay of the material and the subjective forces
when we study nationalism. Cultural resources, such as language and cultural and his-
torical knowledge, can be transformed into material forces through human agencies.
It is this process that is not yet well understood.There are scholars who focus on the
subjective or objective factors in defining and understanding nationalism. Despite the
fact that some analysts consider language, religion, and culture as objective or material
as well as subjective factors, 119 there are scholars, such as Connor, who assert that the
linguistic, religious, and cultural factors are not determining factors in defining and
understanding nationalism. 120 Walker Connor sees a nation as people who believe that
they have a common ancestry. He thinks that subjective factors such as “the self-iden-
tification of people with a group—its past, its present, and, what is most important, its
destiny” are prime requisites in defining ethnonation and nationalism. 121 Although
some social scientists emphasize material or objective factors at the cost of subjective
ones,the latter “are recorded and immortalized in the arts,languages,sciences and laws
of the community which, though subject to a slower development, leave their imprint
on the perceptions of subsequent generations and shape the structures and atmosphere
of the community through the distinctive traditions they deposit.” 122
The dominant social classes and nations use cultural resources to promote their
interests.According to Markakis,“Cultural elements themselves may have a material
dimension if, as often the case, they mediate access to power and privilege. Lan-
guage, the basic cultural attribute of nationalism, often plays this role in multiethnic
states with a single official language. Groups whose languages are ignored by the
state may find themselves at a distinct disadvantage in competing for access to edu-
cation and state office. . . . Similarly, religion may be endowed with a material di-
mension.” 123 When we study anticolonial nationalism, we must explore how
colonized populations were cut off from their historical and cultural roots and civ-
ilizations—degraded and dehumanized by being reduced from autonomy to depen-
dence by losing access to their previously empowering cultural and economic
resources, and rendered powerless by colonial rule or racial/ethnonational domina-
tion. However, unless they commit genocide, colonial powers cannot eradicate the
cultures of the colonized populations; one of the major reasons that oppressed na-
tionalism emerges is the resilience of the cultures of the dominated populations. Be-
cause of this, national liberation is seen as an act of cultural struggle. 124 Returning
to their historical and cultural roots and developing political programs, some ele-