SAN209 Theory of Ethnicity and Nationalism

Faculty of Social Studies
Autumn 2008
Extent and Intensity
0/0. 6 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
doc. Mgr. Jakub Grygar, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
doc. Mgr. Jakub Grygar, Ph.D.
Department of Sociology – Faculty of Social Studies
Contact Person: doc. Mgr. Jakub Grygar, Ph.D.
Timetable
Tue 12:00–13:30 U35
Prerequisites (in Czech)
SAN103 Currant social/cultural theory
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is offered to students of any study field.
Course objectives
The course provides a survey of main ideas underlying debates on ethnicity, nationalism and national identity. Based on assigned weekly reading, issues of national identity and ethnicity as well as dominant theories on nationalism and multiculturalism will be tackled during the course sessions. Main objectives can be summarized as follows: to understand key debates about ethnicity and nationalism; to understand how the ethnic or national identity is invented,, produced, and maintained; to analyze selected ethnic or national movements in wider socio-cultural context.
Syllabus
  • I. Ethnic group and nation: fact or analytical category?
  • Construction of ethnicity as an anthropological category. Colonial legacy
  • Primordial and constructivist theories of ethnicity
  • What is a nation?
  • Ethnicity as parxis and bildung
  • Transnacionalism and ethnic diasporas
  • II. Remembering and forgeting. Dis/continuities of ethnic identities
  • Memory, history and national consciousness
  • Forgeting as a way of memory
  • III. Nationalism as politics of identity
  • Neonationalisms a regionalisms
  • Nationalismus in post-communist countries
  • State and cultural nationalism in Belarus
  • Ethnicity as otherness
Literature
  • JENKINS, Richard. Rethinking ethnicity : arguments and explorations. 1st ed. London: SAGE Publications, 1997, 194 s. ISBN 080397678X. info
  • SMITH, Anthony D. Nationalism and modernism : a critical survey of recent theories of nations and nationalism. First published. London: Routledge, 1998, xiv, 270. ISBN 0415063418. info
  • GELLNER, Ernest André. Nations and nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983, viii, 150. ISBN 0631130888. info
  • HOLÝ, Ladislav. Malý český člověk a skvělý český národ :národní identita a postkomunistická transformace společnosti. Translated by Zdeněk Uherek. Praha: Sociologické nakladatelství, 2001, 209 s. ISBN 80-85850-97-4. info
  • The little czech and the great czech nation : national identity and post-communist social transformation (Orig.) : Malý český člověk a skvělý český národ : národní identita a postkomunistická transformace společnosti. info
Assessment methods
Course requirements: 3 essays (1200 words); class participation; oral exam.
Language of instruction
Czech
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
Study Materials
The course is taught once in two years.
General note: Předmět lze zapsat i v případě, že studující v aktuálním semestru souběžně navštěvuje kurs SAN 103 - Současná sociální a kulturní teorie (prerekvizita).
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2006, Autumn 2006, Autumn 2009.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Autumn 2008, recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/fss/autumn2008/SAN209