Which of the following is the fourth stage of economic development?
i) Agrarian society ii) Early industrialization iii) Mature Industrialization
iv) service economy
Answers
Answer:
3.2 Ernst Gellner
Gellner (1983) starts with an ideal type of agrarian society: their central feature is an ideologically buttressed functional division of labor which separates the ‘high culture’ of a hereditary administrative-military ruling class and universal clerisy from the ‘low cultures’ of socially isolated and illiterate peasant communities. This status segregation has a cognitive dimension as well: the world is experienced as culturally and ontologically heterogeneous.
A profound change occurs with the modern cognitive revolution: the world is now seen as a coherent whole subject to universal laws expressed in a unitary linguistic idiom. The social correlate of this cognitive revolution is industrialism. If intellectual progress presupposes the perpetual exploration of reality, the idea of unlimited growth demands the constant redrawing of traditional social boundaries and roles in line with the functional requirements of the division of labor. These requirements can be met only by a common linguistic idiom transmitted through standardized education. Literacy in a shared language prepares individuals for new functional roles, increases their mobility prospects, and facilitates communication among strangers in an impersonal world. The emergence of a shared culture favors nationalism as a political principle which holds that the state must rest on the foundation of national culture; the state, in turn, acquires a new source of legitimacy (compare Weber). Thus, industrialism is a necessary condition of nationalism. Ethnicity is secondary—it is nationalism which invents nations.
Finally, nationalism disseminates through uneven development. In a typical imperial (e.g., Habsburg) situation an ethnic division of labor is present: the carriers of high culture belong to one ethnic group (or groups), those of low culture to another (or others). The social exclusion of the aspiring intelligentsia of the subordinate group leads it to adopt ‘ethnic nationalism’ as a strategy of collective mobility (e.g., Czech nationalism). In contrast, ‘diaspora nationalism’ develops among politically excluded ‘high-culture’ pariah groups (e.g., Jews). The ideal case is a mature industrial society in which elites and masses share a standardized idiom and consider themselves conationals in a common state.
Gellner's elegant theory has enjoyed enormous influence. It has been criticized on several grounds: (a) the theory does not specify a causal (group) agent: nationalism is seen as a by-product of the impersonal process of industrialization; (b) nationalism can precede industrialization (e.g., Balkan nationalism); (c) nations can precede nationalism (see Sect. 4); and (d) nations are rooted in premodern, ethnic identities (see Sect. 5).