CLASS, NATION AND IDENTITY

by Jeff Pratt

Political movements across the world have such diverse characteristics and aims that it is difficult to examine them as a collective group. Movements that are class-based are usually portrayed as formed by economic categories of people driven by material interests. By contrast the study of ethnic or nationalist movements has concentrated on the complexities of identity formation within culturally defined groups driven by strong passions. In this unusual book, Jeff Pratt argues for the need to set up a new analytical framework that extends the study of identity formation, and the ethnographic analysis of economic and social processes, to all political movements. Setting up a new analytical framework, he argues that political processes involve two linked a 'discourse' (an identity narrative which positions us within social history) and a 'movement' (the process of organization whereby local social divisions are transformed by their incorporation into a wider movement). He illustrates his arguments with a vivid mix of case studies from across the last century including Basque nationalism, Andalusian anarchism, Italian communism, the break-up of Yugoslavia, to the 'newer' political movements in Europe, in French Occitania and the Italian Lega Nord.

Genres: Politics, Anthropology

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 2003

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is superb. So many treatments of contemporary political movements seem to treat class and ethnicity mutually incompatible but what Pratt does extremely well is 1) show how they may interweave in various contexts, and 2) demonstrate conclusively (not that I need much convincing) that identities such as ethnicity and class are made, not given. His range of case studies is broad – if all southern European and mainly 20th century, but Marxist, anarchist, liberal/middle class, progressive, reactionary and most political persuasions around them. I was quite taken by the case made for class and ethnicity as interwoven that drew on the socialist-inspired lower middle class and small farmer movement in Occitania (southern France) and the xenophobic right wing Lega Nord in Italy as its examples.

He is most interested in exploring how the cultural becomes the ethnic (a good anthropological question) and the ways that horizontal links/difference articulate to vertical origin and historical narratives to make identities – what he refers to on p 184 as “opposition and continuity, battles and begetting”, but also reminds us in his discussions of the Basque country and Bosnia that violence was not the product of innate ethnic and cultural difference but a political strategy that produced those ethnic and cultural differences. Simply superb and one that I will return to time and again I expect. If I was considering for a text anywhere (which I can’t in the sport studies programme) I’d say good for upper level undergraduates and beyond.

[Daniel Hammer · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone looking at nationalisms, this is a great little book. Pratt questions scholars have treated nationalism as a solidarity premised upon emotional and cultural ties, while class in treated as a non-emotional, economic structure of society. He uses a compelling series of European case studies to demonstrate how the construction of class (in places like Andalusia and Tuscany) has relied on similar processes of group identity building and inclusion/exclusion as nation. He exposes the contingent, cultural elements of both of these categories of collectivity. This book definitely deserves a wider readership.