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

ZOLTÁN KÁNTORFurthermore, I have briefly demonstrated that the debate regardingthe establishment of a Hungarian university is not understandable if oneconcentrates only on education and disregards the nation-buildingprocess. I have argued that, from this perspective, one can grasp the meaningof the debates within the ethnic parties on the question of participatingin the government or remaining in opposition. Similarly, the conceptionof the “Status Law” cannot be understood if one does not analyze theethnocultural definition of the Hungarian nation, and does not take intoaccount the underlying assumptions of the Hungarian government regardingthe national minorities as nationalizing minorities. However, it is stilla question whether Hungary’s politics, as an external national homeland,leads to a general Hungarian nation-building, or to separate minoritynation-buildings in the neighboring states.NOTES1See Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the NationalQuestion in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),pp. 63-67. See also Rogers Brubaker, “Myths and Misconceptions in the Studyof Nationalism,” in John A. Hall, ed., The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellnerand the Theory of Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),pp. 272-305.2Adopted by the Hungarian Parliament on 19 June 2001. Available fromhttp://www.htmh.hu/law.htm; Internet; accessed 5 August 2001.3Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, p. 7.4Brubaker argues, “I choose this term [nationalizing state] rather than ‘nationstate’to emphasize that I am talking about a dynamic political stance-or a familyof related yet competing stances – rather than a static condition.” Brubaker,Nationalism Reframed, p. 63.5I developed this theoretical framework in Zoltán Kántor, “Kisebbséginemzetépítés: A romániai magyarság mint nemzetépítõ kisebbség” (Minoritynation-building: The Hungarians in Romania as a nationalizing minority),Regio 3 (2000), pp. 219-240.6Miroslav Hroch, “National Self-Determination from a Historical Perspective,”in Sukumar Periwal, ed., Notions of Nationalism (Budapest: Central EuropeanUniversity Press, 1995), p. 66.7For example, Hungarians in Romania constitute a nationalizing minority,while Bulgarians in Romania or Hungarians in Austria do not; in WesternEurope, the Northern-Irish Catholic community is a typical nationalizingminority. In the light of the events of the last twenty years, Albanians in Kosovocan also be considered a nationalizing minority.8See Rogers Brubaker, “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism,”in Hall, ed., The State of the Nation, p. 277.270