Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian ...

Nationhood and Identity3See Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983); BenedictAnderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread ofNationalism (London: Verso, 1983); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalismsince 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1990); and Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. 2, The Rise of Classesand Nation-States, 1760-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1993).4As Smith puts it, “to belong to a ‘community of history and destiny’ hasbecome for many people a surrogate for religious fate, over and above anyindividual worldly ends that the collective actions it inspires may serve.” SeeAnthony Smith, “The Myth of the ‘Modern Nation’ and the Myths of Nations,”Ethnic and Racial Studies 11 (1988), p. 12.5Verdery argues that “systems of social classification not only classify in institutionalizedform, they also establish grounds for authority and legitimacy,through the categories they set down, and they make their categories seemboth natural and socially real.” See Katherine Verdery, “Whither ‘Nation’ and‘Nationalism’?” p. 37.6As such, the national dimension is part of the habitus. For the concept of habitus,see Pierre Bourdieu, “The Genesis of the Concept of Habitus and ofField,” Sociocriticism 2 (December 1985), pp. 11-23. See also Pierre Bourdieuand Loïc Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: PolityPress, 1992), pp. 94-115.7According to Verdery, “‘Nation’ is a name for the relationship that linksa state (actual or potential) with its subjects. Historically, it has meant a relationshipof at least two kinds: 1) a citizenship relation, in which the nation is thecollective sovereign emanating from common political participation; 2) a relationknown as ethnicity, in which the nation comprises all those of supposedlycommon language, history or broader ‘cultural’ identity.” See KatherineVerdery, “Nationalism and National Sentiment in Post-Socialist Romania,”Slavic Review 52 (Summer 1993), p. 180.8Greenfeld argues that “an essential characteristic of any identity is that it isnecessarily the view the concerned actor has of himself or herself. It thereforeeither exists or does not. … Identity is perception. If a particular identity doesnot mean anything to the population in question, this population does not havethis particular identity.” See Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads toModernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 13.9Such as the history of group-domination and territorial claims, geographicaldistribution of the majority and minority populations, the relation between therespective national states, and between a state and its ethnonational kin in theother state.10 Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, p. 82.11 For a comprehensive analysis of these efforts, see Irina Livezeanu, CulturalPolitics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building & Ethnic Struggle,1918-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995).12 See Mary Ellen Fisher, Nicolae Ceauºescu: A Study of Political Leadership(Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publications, 1989); Trond Gilberg, Nationalism andCommunism in Romania: The Rise and Fall of Ceauºescu’s Personal Dictatorship(Boulder: Westview Press, 1990); Gail Kligman, The Politics of Duplicity: Con-243