Andreas Wimmer | |
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Awards | Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research (2019) |
Academic background | |
Education | |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Nationalism |
Institutions |
Andreas Wimmer is a Swiss sociologist who is the Lieber Professor of Sociology and Political Philosophy at Columbia University. [1] [2] He has a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Zurich. [3]
He is known for his research on nationalism,nation building,and ethnic conflict. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] He is credited with having "notably revitalized the macropolitical study of nationalism." [11]
Wimmer's research into the processes and conditions affecting the development of nation-states suggest that different conditions may have led to the development of nation-states at different times. In Great Britain,France,and the United States,Wimmer argues that elites and masses slowly grew to identify with each other as states were established in which more people were able to participate politically and receive public goods in exchange for taxes. Conditions affecting recent,geographically diverse,postcolonial states may not be comparable. [11]
Wimmer was awarded the 2019 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research in recognition of his book Nation Building:Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart. [12] In the book,he argues that three factors tend to determine whether nation-building succeeds in the long term:"the early development of civil-society organisations,the rise of a state capable of providing public goods evenly across a territory,and the emergence of a shared medium of communication." [13] [1] [14] Harris Mylonas described the book as an "instant classic comparable to Karl Deutsch's Nationalism and Social Communication (1953) or Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism (1983)." [15]
Wimmer does not see ethnic or racial diversity in themselves as detrimental to nation-building. [1] Groups that are not a target of ethnopolitical conflict,that have access to power,and feel that their group is included in a nation,are more likely to report pride in that nation. Where political institutions become exclusionary,ethnic groups are less likely to feel a sense of national belonging. [11]
Wimmer argues instead that linguistic diversity is a key stumbling block to nation-building. [1] [16] He argues that a shared language makes it easier for political alliances and networks to emerge within a prospective nation that ultimately contribute to shared national identification. [1]
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement,it tends to promote the interests of a particular nation,especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland to create a nation-state. It holds that each nation should govern itself,free from outside interference (self-determination),that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity,and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power. It further aims to build and maintain a single national identity,based on a combination of shared social characteristics such as culture,ethnicity,geographic location,language,politics,religion,traditions and belief in a shared singular history,and to promote national unity or solidarity. Nationalism,therefore,seeks to preserve and foster a nation's traditional culture. There are various definitions of a "nation",which leads to different types of nationalism. The two main divergent forms are ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism.
A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language,history,ethnicity,culture and/or society. A nation is thus the collective identity of a group of people understood as defined by those features. Some nations are equated with ethnic groups and some are equated with affiliation to a social and political constitution. A nation is generally more overtly political than an ethnic group. A nation has also been defined as a cultural-political community that has become conscious of its autonomy,unity and particular interests.
An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more contending ethnic groups. While the source of the conflict may be political,social,economic or religious,the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's position within society. This criterion differentiates ethnic conflict from other forms of struggle.
Democratization,or democratisation,is the transition to a more democratic political regime,including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction. It may be a hybrid regime in transition from an authoritarian regime to a full democracy,a transition from an authoritarian political system to a semi-democracy or transition from a semi-authoritarian political system to a democratic political system.
Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of the state. Nation-building aims at the unification of the people within the state so that it remains politically stable and viable in the long run. According to Harris Mylonas,"Legitimate authority in modern national states is connected to popular rule,to majorities. Nation-building is the process through which these majorities are constructed."
International political economy (IPE) or Global political economy (GPE) is the study of interactions between the economy on a global level and political and economic actors,systems and institutions. More precisely,IPE/GPE focuses on global economic governance,through studies of macroeconomic phenomena such as globalization,international trade,the monetary and financial system,international inequality,and development,and how these are shaped by,amongst others,international organizations,multinational corporations,and sovereign states.
Comparative politics is a field in political science characterized either by the use of the comparative method or other empirical methods to explore politics both within and between countries. Substantively,this can include questions relating to political institutions,political behavior,conflict,and the causes and consequences of economic development. When applied to specific fields of study,comparative politics may be referred to by other names,such as comparative government.
Barrington Moore Jr. was an American political sociologist,and the son of forester Barrington Moore.
Charles Tilly was an American sociologist,political scientist,and historian who wrote on the relationship between politics and society. He was a professor of history,sociology,and social science at the University of Michigan from 1969 to 1984 before becoming the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University.
Stein Rokkan was a Norwegian political scientist and sociologist. He was the first professor of sociology at the University of Bergen and a principal founder of the discipline of comparative politics. He founded the multidisciplinary Department of Sociology at the University of Bergen,which encompassed sociology,economics and political science and which had a key role in the postwar development of the social sciences in Norway.
Historical institutionalism (HI) is a new institutionalist social science approach that emphasizes how timing,sequences and path dependence affect institutions,and shape social,political,economic behavior and change. Unlike functionalist theories and some rational choice approaches,historical institutionalism tends to emphasize that many outcomes are possible,small events and flukes can have large consequences,actions are hard to reverse once they take place,and that outcomes may be inefficient. A critical juncture may set in motion events that are hard to reverse,because of issues related to path dependency. Historical institutionalists tend to focus on history to understand why specific events happen.
In political science and sociology,a cleavage is a historically determined social or cultural line which divides citizens within a society into groups with differing political interests,resulting in political conflict among these groups. Social or cultural cleavages thus become political cleavages once they get politicized as such. Cleavage theory accordingly argues that political cleavages predominantly determine a country's party system as well as the individual voting behavior of citizens,dividing them into voting blocs. It is distinct from other common political theories on voting behavior in the sense that it focuses on aggregate and structural patterns instead of individual voting behaviors.
John Hutchinson is a British academic. He is a reader in nationalism at the London School of Economics (LSE),in the Department of Government.
Siniša Malešević,MRIA,MAE is an Irish scholar who is Full Professor/Chair of Sociology at the University College,Dublin,Ireland. He is also a Senior Fellow and Associate Researcher at Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM),Paris,France.
State formation is the process of the development of a centralized government structure in a situation in which one did not exist. State formation has been a study of many disciplines of the social sciences for a number of years,so much so that Jonathan Haas writes,"One of the favorite pastimes of social scientists over the course of the past century has been to theorize about the evolution of the world's great civilizations."
Harris Mylonas is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University and the editor-in-chief for Nationalities Papers,a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Cambridge University Press. He is the author of The Politics of Nation-Building:Making Co-Nationals,Refugees,and Minorities,which was awarded the Peter Katzenstein Book Prize in September 2013 and the 2014 European Studies Book Award by the Council for European Studies. He has co-edited Enemies Within:The Global Politics of Fifth Columns as well as The Microfoundations of Diaspora Politics and is currently working on another book project,Diaspora Management Logics. His documentary Searching for Andreas:Political Leadership in Times of Crisis (2018),which deals with the deep causes of the recent financial and political crisis in Greece,premiered at the 2018 Thessaloniki Documentary Festival and won two awards at the 2019 International Documentary Festival of Ierapetra.
In social science,methodological nationalism is an intellectual orientation and pattern in scholarly research that conceives of the nation-state as the sole unit of analysis or as a container for social processes. This concept has largely been developed by Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller,who specifically define it as "the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world". Methodological Nationalism has been identified in many social science subfields,such as anthropology,sociology,and the interdisciplinary field of migration studies. Methodological Nationalism,as a practice within Social Science,has been further critiqued by scholars such as Saskia Sassen,who contends that the nation-state and its borders are an insufficient unit of analysis and that the national is at times the "terrains of the global".
Michael Hechter is an American sociologist and Foundation Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University. He is also Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington.
Critical juncture theory focuses on critical junctures,i.e.,large,rapid,discontinuous changes,and the long-term causal effect or historical legacy of these changes. Critical junctures are turning points that alter the course of evolution of some entity. Critical juncture theory seeks to explain both (1) the historical origin and maintenance of social order,and (2) the occurrence of social change through sudden,big leaps.
Modernization theory is the predominant explanation for emergence of nationalism among scholars of nationalism. Prominent modernization scholars,such as Ernest Gellner,Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawn,say nationalism arose with modernization during the late 18th century. Processes that lead to the emergence of nationalism include industrialization and democratic revolutions.