Overview
How are nations made, and how does nationalism become politically effective? The lecture begins by distinguishing a nation from a state, a country and an ethnic group. It compares accounts that treat nations as ancient with modernist explanations centered on industrialization and mass education. Print capitalism provides a further mechanism.
Mainstream international relations often treats national identity as a fixed property of states. Comparing realist and liberal accounts with constructivist and Marxist ones puts that assumption under pressure. Korea under Japanese colonial rule and Ukraine after Russia’s invasions also complicate the claim that civic nationalism is inherently inclusive while ethnic nationalism is inherently exclusionary. The institutional setting and political purpose matter. The second half turns to racialized membership and Joane Nagel’s account of the masculinist nation. It considers patriotic motherhood alongside reproductive politics and militarized sexuality.
Questions guiding the lecture
- How is a nation constructed rather than simply given?
- How do different IR traditions explain nationalism and national identity?
- How have race and ethnicity shaped the boundary between members and outsiders?
- How do gendered expectations organize national reproduction, protection, and sacrifice?
- When can nationalism sustain solidarity, and when does it become hierarchical or expansionist?
Lecture map
The making of nations requires clear distinctions among nation, state, country and ethnicity. Primordialist claims provide one account, while Gellner and Anderson represent modernist alternatives.
Realist and liberal theories explain nationalism differently from constructivist and Marxist accounts. Their disagreements concern national cohesion and conflict as well as the role of institutions and class power.
Korea and Ukraine show how the civic–ethnic distinction works as an analytical axis. It provides no simple moral ranking.
The boundaries of membership are racialized and gendered. Externally imposed identity and masculinity shape them, as do patriotic motherhood and reproductive politics.
Readings
Heywood, Andrew, and Ben Whitham. 2023. Global Politics, 3rd ed., Chapters 8–9.
Provides the conceptual spine for nations and nationalism and for the global politics of identity, difference, and culture.
Nagel, Joane. 2022. “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations.” In Nations and Nationalism, 110–130. Edinburgh University Press.
Shows how national projects organize patriotic manhood, motherhood, reproduction, and militarized sexuality. The assigned chapter reprints Nagel's 1998 article.
Recommended extensions
The syllabus recommends Griffiths and Sullivan (1997), “Nationalism and International Relations Theory,” 53–66, and Jiyoung Ko's Popular Nationalism and War (Oxford University Press, 2023). Anthony D. Smith on nationalism and John Hutchinson on nationalism and war complete the list.
Classroom study
Descriptive classroom survey
What makes someone “truly” part of a nation?
The survey asks which membership criteria participants consider important and records their scores on a citizen-preference measure. Selected classroom measures were also compared descriptively with ISSP 2023 benchmarks.
The instrument was descriptive rather than randomized. It included questions about nationality and ideology, a citizen-preference measure and an eight-item membership battery. The battery covered birth and ancestry, citizenship and residence, language, religion, respect for institutions and felt membership.
The participating class is a convenience group and cannot provide a population estimate. Cross-national benchmark comparisons remain descriptive. Some membership items also lack directly comparable ISSP measures.
No response-level or aggregate student results are reproduced on this public site. The study is included to document what was asked and how the exercise connected definitions of nationhood to measurement.
Takeaways
- Nations are institutional and symbolic accomplishments. Demography alone cannot account for them.
- The civic–ethnic distinction is analytically useful. Context determines whether either form enables inclusion, exclusion or collective survival.
- Boundary-making and classification produce race as part of national identity.
- National projects assign gendered roles in protection and sacrifice. They also regulate reproduction and representation.
- National solidarity can support redistribution and self-determination while also creating hierarchies of membership.
Course record checked against the 2025–2026 syllabus and the lecture slides, speaker notes and reading guide. The fielded survey and analysis workflow were used to verify the classroom study.