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

Nationalizing Minorities and Homeland Politicsegory of practice, not (in the first instance) a category of analysis. Tounderstand nationalism, we have to understand the practical uses of thecategory “nation,” the ways it can come to structure perception, toinform thought and experience, to organize discourse and politicalaction. 3One should not commit the mistake of essentializing national minorities.National minorities are constructed and imagined as much as nations are.One should analyze them also as practical categories, institutionalizedforms, and contingent events. In line with Brubaker’s conceptual transformationof the nation-state into nationalizing state, 4 I propose the conceptof nationalizing minority instead of national minority. 5Miroslav Hroch’s analysis of non-dominant ethnic groups in theframework of nation-formation summarizes their goals as follows: (1) thedevelopment or improvement of national culture based on a local language,which had to be used in education, administration, and economiclife; (2) the creation of a complete social structure, including their “own”educated elites and entrepreneurial classes; and (3) the achievement ofequal civil rights and of some degree of political self-administration. 6 Inmy interpretation (as Hroch already suggested), there are similaritiesbetween the process of nation-formation in the 19 th century and presentdayminority nationalism.Considering this, I also propose that one should employ the conceptof nationalizing minority in order to analyze the nationalism of a nationalminority. This concept captures the internal dynamics of the nationalminority and permits the analysis of long-term processes. These processesare slightly different from those of the nationalizing state, but the mechanismsare similar. National minorities engaged in a nation-buildingprocess are nationalizing minorities. This distinction is of primary importancein a sociological or political sense, and is of little significance forlegal use. It can be employed only in an analytical approach, and not ina normative one. Furthermore, nationalizing minorities are distinguishablefrom the non-nationalizing ones. 7Empirically, one can present the following distinctive features:(1) a nationalizing minority is sufficiently numerous to have a real chance ofachieving a number of its goals; (2) nationalizing minorities express politicalgoals, and not only cultural ones. Their goal is not only the preservation ofnational/cultural identity, but also the promotion and institutionalization ofit. The creation of institutions that resemble those of a state is essential, as isthe establishment of a minority “life-world;” and (3) nationalizing minoritiesattempt to transform the political structure of the state and struggle for politicalrepresentation on state level.251