by Yael Tamir
determinants of inter- group conflict.16
Felt injustice raises hostility and violence even among artificial
groups. The Robbers Cave experiment is one such wel - known
example. Muzafer Sherif brought to a summer camp in Okla-
homa two groups of eleven- year- old boys and managed to
experimentally create felt injustice that led to hostile action
spinning almost out of control.17 These findings are replicated in
50 • Chapter
6
real life: hostility is therefore more closely associated with felt
injustice and a sense of undeserved and biased attitude than the
mere fact of membership.
The fact that felt injustice encourages hostility has very little
to do with group psychology and is known to us from the dawn
of humanity, which was then made up of only four humans:
Adam, Eve, and their two sons Cain and Abel. Cain was a tiller
of the ground and Abel a keeper of sheep.
And in the process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the
fruit of the ground an offering to the Lord. And Abel, he also
brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat parts thereof. And
the Lord had respect to Abel and to his offering: but to Cain and
his offering he had no respect. And Cain was very angry, and his face
fel . . . . And Cain talked with Abel, his brother: and it came to pass,
when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his
brother, and slew him. . . . And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest
any finding him should smite him.
All the elements of present- day social drama can be found in
this first human confrontation: envious comparison, jealousy,
hatred, hurt pride, revenge, and violence. The difference between
the rival parties was minor and they knew each other wel . A deep
sense of injustice and wounded pride were all that was needed
to spur the first murder. Humanity bears Cain’s mark; individu-
als cannot be envy-free, neither can they ignore the anger in-
voked by injustice.
Felt injustice is a subjective matter, as members often think
of themselves as better, more deserving, than others— even an
egalitarian distribution of resources may seem, to some, an ex-
pression of injustice. For these reasons, the well- known social
psychologist Roger Brown claims that intergroup conflict is “a
sturdy three- legged stool. It is sturdy because two legs are
Our Psychological Means • 51
universal, ineradicable psychological processes, ethnocentrism
and stereotyping; the third leg is a state of society, unfair distri-
bution of resources, which has always existed everywhere.”18 The
lesson is clear, in order to reduce social tensions we should spend
less time waging a war against the human tendency to gather
in groups, and the inevitable outcomes of this tendency—
stereotyping, in- group favoritism, and ethnocentrism— and
more on joining forces to combat social inequality and
injustice.
It is injustice then that we should be dealing with. Preventing
the slide of group- oriented attitudes into bel igerency requires,
above all, a search for decent political agreements. Liberals who
aspire to advance peace and reconciliation may be using the
wrong kind of social and political tools. They should perhaps care
less about reducing the effects of membership in particular
groups and more about fairness; in other words, they should de-
velop ways of abolishing social, political, and economic in-
equalities rather than borders.
Justice will be the main topic of the last section of this book,
but a journey exploring the nature of nationalism cannot over-
look the inspirational aspects of nationalism that turned it into
a powerful motivational tool. Natural selection works in the ideo-
logical field as much as in nature. Ideologies survive if, and only
if, they fulfill some basic functional needs. The persistence of
nationalism proves its effectiveness.
7
Nation Building
Psychology does not mark nations as having any advantages over
other human associations; families, tribes, friendships, and
unions can also play a mediating role. So what makes nations so
powerful and special? In answering this question, two reasons
come to mind: one obvious the other unexpected. The former
is institutional and relates to the alliance between the nation and
the state. No entity is more able than the state to promote ideas
in the public sphere. States have collaborated in the past with
monarchs, emperors, churches, and political parties, and yet, as
we shall see in the following chapters, their partnership with the
nation had some exceptionally valuable qualities.
The unexpected, more surprising, reason concerns the fact
that the very same features that make nations attractive al ies
of the modern state— namely, being natural, historical, and
continuous entities— are mostly fabricated. In order to estab-
lish authenticity and gain the loyalty of their members, nations
must therefore continuously be made and remade. This constant
creative effort turns nationalism into the most active and engag-
ing social force of the last two centuries.
In its prime, in the heydays of the nation- state, nationalism
was an all- encompassing power that shaped both the public and
the private sphere. It molded the lives of individuals and struc-
tured the fate of whole societies. One must comprehend the
Nation
Building • 53
uniqueness of this interaction in order to understand the depth
of the void created by its absence. This part of the book thus
explores the way nationalism shaped the modern state and
provided it with tools necessary to turn from an administrative
service into a caring entity that takes on itself not merely the
role of a neutral coordinator but also that of a compassionate and
attentive mother(land).
The caring state defined its duty in paternalistic terms; it did
not recoil from educating, guiding, even manipulating the knowl-
edge and feelings of its members. This has allowed the nation-
state to form the social solidarity necessary for the establishment
of a welfare state, fostering mutual obligations that cross classes,
genders, and generations. The fading away of national attach-
ments and the spread of neoliberal views led the state to withdraw
from its social and economic involvement, weakening its ideo-
logical hold over individual citizens and losing its integrative
powers; the lean state became the order of the day. The last part
of the book will examine the social and political outcomes of
this process and will ponder whether some of the advantages of
the nation- state could be recovered.
Throughout the book I argue that the malaise of our age, call
it alienation, individualism, the Me decade, loneliness, “bawling
alone,” is a result of the hollowing of the political community and
the weakening of the state. The liberal preference for universal
values meant that liberalism nurtured a concept of the person
as liberated from al particular relationships, memberships, or
identities. Anything that could hold stable meaning and con-
nection was scorned— this meant that cultural ties were dis-
missed, family ties devalued, connections to the past cut off,
attempts to define a common good demeaned. As Deneen
argues, in the end, we’ve all been left terribly alone. “That’s the
54 • Chapter
7
heart of it, really. Liberalism is loneliness. The state isn’t our sib-
ling; the market won’t be our mate.”1
Hence, liberalism failed where its major competitors—
nationalism and religion— succeeded; putting the universal
before the particular, liberalism misunderstood the need for spe-
cific identities. A poignant expression of this misconception
comes from the architectural field. The liberal resentment of the
ornamented symbolic style and its preference for a wel - ordered
frame of mind was echoed in the Bauhaus vision of worker hous-
ing in America. Yale- and Harvard- educated architects wanted
workers’ houses to have “pure beige rooms, stripped, freed,
purged of all moldings, cornices and overhangs . . . it should be
liberated from all wallpaper, drapes, Wilton rugs with flowers on
them, lamps with fringed shades and bases that looked like
vases or Greek columns. It would be clean of all doilies, knick-
knacks, mantelpieces, headboards, and radiator covers. Radiator
coils would be left bare as honest, abstract, sculptural objects.”2
A perfect representation of a universal architecture suitable to
the modern family.
Yet the workers didn’t share the dream of brute simplicity and
universality. “They bought houses with clapboard siding and
high- pitched roofs and shingles and gaslight- style front- porch
lamps and mailboxes set up on top of lengths of stiffed chain that
seems to defy gravity, and al sorts of other unbelievable cute and
antiquary touches.”3 This is not because the workers had no aes-
thetic preferences, but because, like all of us, they wanted their
homes to be particular rather than universal. Fulfil ing the task
of particularization, nationalism is at its best, and this, among
other reasons, is why it is back.4
Contrary to liberalism, nationalism went the opposite way,
highlighting the particular nature of human relationships. Using
acts of narration, organizing historical events into a sequence that
Nation
Building • 55
has internal and external meaning, it told a story that gave the
collective existence a meaning. The national story portrayed the
nation as a community of fate, whose storyline stretches from
a glorious past to an inspiring future. For nationalists, Anthony
Smith argues, the nation was always there, part of the natural
order of things. The task of the nationalist is simply to remind
compatriots of the past so that they can re-create and relive this
glory. Nationalists thus play an active and vital role in the con-
struction of their nations,
not as culinary artists or social engineers, but as political archae-
ologists rediscovering and reinterpreting the communal past in
order to regenerate the community. Their task is indeed selective—
they forget as well as remember the past— but to succeed in their
task they must meet certain criteria. Their interpretations must be
consonant not only with the ideological demands of nationalism,
but also with the scientific evidences. . . . Episodes like the recovery
of Hatsor and Masada, of the tomb of Tutankhamun, the legends of
the Kalevala, and the ruins of Teotihuacan, have met these criteria
and in different ways have come to underpin and define the sense
of modern nationality in Israel, Egypt, Finland and Mexico. . . . In
this continually renewed two- way relationship between ethnic
past and nationalist present lies the secret of the nation’s explosive
energy and the awful power it exerts over its members.5
Being a modern phenomenon, national energy is invested
in processes of “fact finding," thus allowing them to rational-
ize their beliefs. The following chapters claim that— using
the tools of narration, collective consciousness, and shared
memories— nationalism allows individuals to expand their
self to the collective sphere, thus endowing their life with mean-
ing and allowing them to feel as active authors of their lives.6
The desire to be autonomous, unrecognized in prenational,
56 • Chapter
7
predemocratic periods when meaning could have been be-
stowed from above, makes nationalism an important modern
agent that can bridge the old and the new, blend the voluntarism
with fate, give an assurance of eternity while expanding the scope
of freedom, and encourage individuals to be creative, social
agents.
The existence of a nation, argues the French intellectual
Ernest Renan, is “a daily referendum.”7 In order to survive, a nation
needs to make two moves: “One lies in the past, the other in the
present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of
memories; the other is present- day consent, a desire to live to-
gether, a will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has
received in an undivided form.”8 The national work of recruit-
ment, he argues, is never over, neither is the fear of assimilation.
Nation building is ongoing and laborious, a daily attempt to
convince each and every member that, for him/her, the na-
tional choice is the rational choice.
This is no secret, and here is a wel - known example: the uni-
fication of Italy created a nationless state; this was rightly seen
as an unstable political state of affairs. Nation building became
an urgent task; the words of the nineteenth- century statesman
Massimo d’Azeglio became an emblem: “We have made Italy.
Now we have to make Italians.” At the time, Italy did not exist
as either a political, cultural, or national entity; only 2.5 percent
of its population spoke standard Italian, and many saw them-
selves as affiliated with the neighboring nations. The different
regions had distinct linguistic and cultural traditions, even di-
verse cuisines. Today, 150 years later, Italy has managed to craft
a unified identity, but regional identities are thriving and threaten
the union by raising separatist demands. If Italy is to remain
united it cannot abandon the work of national maintenance.
Nation
Building • 57
The need to supply individuals with reasons for membership
forces nations to constantly produce and reproduce the national
narrative. In the modern nation- state this effort was state spon-
sored. Using its extraordinary resources, the state supplied the
mechanisms needed to cultivate the national narrative and nur-
ture national feelings; it built schools that taught the national
language and spread the national cul
ture; it erected and funded
national monuments and museums, sponsored national theaters,
national orchestras, national broadcasting services; it con-
structed squares, gardens, and even cemeteries, established
national days, national rituals, and national song competitions,
al meant to ensure the animated presence of the nation in every-
day life. Each of these acts reinforced the other; in the classroom
the teacher told a story that was repeated in the museum, in chil-
dren’s books, and on national TV; national heroes were cele-
brated, children were named after them, and national days were
established to sing their praises. So often was the national story
repeated that it was taken to be true.
National narratives are meant to have a moral, representing
the nation’s better qualities. Think for example about the myth
of George Washington and the cherry tree. When Washington
was six years old, so the story goes, he received a hatchet and
damaged his father’s cherry tree. His father discovered what he
had done and confronted him. Washington confessed: “I can-
not tell a lie,” he said, “I did cut the tree.” Rather than being angry,
his father embraced him. His honesty, he said, was worth more
than a thousand trees.9 It makes no difference whether this is a
true description of Washington’s childhood. What matters is that
it rings true and children could read it in school and take it to be
their moral guide. In this case, as in many others, the effective-
ness of the story is more important than its authenticity.
58 • Chapter
7
As argued, the complex interplay between the (openly) fab-
ricated nature of national myths and their enormous political and
emotional power is a testimony to the human need, intensified
by modernity and secularization, to belong to meaning- providing
communities that extend the boundaries of the self. National-
ism thrives on the human desire to enrich one’s limited creative
capabilities by sharing one’s life with others. It makes this pos-
sible by making the boundaries of the self permeable, allowing
things that happen to others to enter into the private sphere. The
formation of “national consciousness ” is a tel ing example. Con-
sciousness is a private matter; it describes “what affects or goes
on in one’s own mind.”10 The leap to the collective is not at all