Page 94 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

80 Politics in a Small World

education, health, and social assistance in post - Second World War welfare
states (Calhoun, 2007 ). As we shall see in chapter 4 , the politics of
citizenship is still largely, though not exclusively, concerned with preserv-
ing, improving, and extending rights that were established nationally.
But national political communities are not only dependent on bonds of
fellowship. They are also formed in opposition to the nation ’ s “ Others, ”
people who not only do not happen to belong to the nation, but who are
seen as unworthy to be included within it. Nationalism is inherently
exclusionary; everyone in the world cannot be a member of a single nation
(it would cease to be a nation). The extent to which exclusion is “ Othering ”
varies, however: those who are excluded may be ignored or respected;
they are not necessarily treated with suspicion and hostility. “ Civic nation-
alism ” is the name given to that variety in which anyone can, in principle,
be a member of the nation, as long as they respect the rights of other citi-
zens and meet their civic obligations. Those who happen to be excluded
from this type of nation are not seen as inherently different in kind as
human beings: they just happen to be members of other nations. The
nations to which they belong may, however, themselves be coded as
“ Other ” for civic nationalists: in order to be acceptable they should also
adhere to universal principles of rights and obligations and to peaceful
coexistence between states. In principle, nations may then be treated as
equals. In contrast, “ ethnic nationalism ” denotes the kind of nationalism
into which one must be born: to belong to an ethnic nation is to come
from original stock, with its particular inheritance of physical attributes,
language, customs, and history. The ethnic nation is inherently “ Othering ”
to a greater extent than the civic nation, because those outside are seen
as different in kind from those inside (Ignatieff, 1994 : 3 – 6; Calhoun,
2007 ). Although the difference between civic and ethnic nationalism is

clear in theory, and nations can be identified on a continuum between
civic and ethnic (with the US and France in the civic camp, for example,
and nations like Germany in the other), because the nation is necessarily
exclusionary, the distinction between them is invariably much less clear -
cut in practice.
The nation ’ s “ Others ” may be internal to the national territory, where
minorities are “ racialized, ” considered as inherently or culturally inferior
in comparison to the majority, and not, therefore, really part of the nation
(see Gilroy, 1992, 2004 ; Morrison, 1992 ). A prominent example currently
is the Othering of Muslim citizens within European states around issues
of women ’ s appearance. In multicultural Britain, for example, women
covering part of their faces in public has repeatedly provoked anxiety,
as it is seen as symbolizing identifi cation against British values, and