What kinds of intellectual practices are influential in the making and remaking of nations? How do literary texts shape nation-making? When are intellectuals most and least relevant to developing the nation? How do liberal, socialist, and nationalist intellectuals shape national ideologies?
One of the principal debates in the study of nations concerns the relative significance of elites, specifically intellectuals, in inventing the nation. Intellectuals and the Articulation of the Nation delimits the capacities of intellectuals for shaping nations, as well as the ways in which the development of nations shapes intellectual practices. The introductory chapter presents the principal debates around nation-making and the identity and practices of intellectuals. Contributors from anthropology, history, literature, political science and sociology then explore the capacities and limits of intellectuals in the formation and restructuring of national identities in general, and in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in particular.
Each essay is followed by a brief intellectual autobiography in which the author’s own relationship to nations is explored. The editors conclude the volume by developing a general theory of national intellectual practice. The principal focus of this book–the mutual articulation of intellectuals and nations–is a key subject for students and scholars of history, cultural studies, political science, anthropology, and sociology.
Ronald Grigor Suny is Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago. Michael D. Kennedy is Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan.