Anthony D. Smith

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For other persons named Anthony Smith, see Anthony Smith (disambiguation).

Anthony D. Smith (born 1928) is Professor Emeritus of Nationalism and Ethnicty at the London School of Economics, and is considered one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of nationalism studies. His best-known contributions to the field are the distinction between 'civic' and 'ethnic' types of nations and nationalism, and the idea that all nations have dominant 'ethnic cores'. While Smith agrees with other authors that nationalism is a modern phenomenon, he insists that nations have pre-modern origins.

Smith took his first degree in Classics and Philosophy in Oxford, and his master's degree and doctorate in Sociology at the London School of Economics. He is currently Professor of Ethnicity and Nationalism in the European Institute at the London School of Economics.

He is a former student of the philosopher and anthropologist Ernest Gellner, but did not share his view of nationalism in the long run. He created an approach of nationalism he called ethnosymbolism, which is a synthesis of modernist and traditional views on the subject.

Smith argues that nationalism draws on the pre-existing history of the "group", an attempt to fashion this history into a sense of common identity and shared history. This is not to say that this history should academically valid or cogent - indeed, Smith asserts, many nationalisms are based on historically flawed interpretations of past events and tend to overly mythologise small, inaccurate parts of their history.

Nationalism, according to Smith, does not require that members of a "nation" should all be alike, only that they should feel an intense bond of solidarity to the nation and other members of their nation. A sense of nationalism can inhabit and be produced from whatever dominant ideology exists in a given locale. Nationalism builds on pre-existing kinship, religious and belief systems. Smith describes the ethnic groups that form the background of modern nations as "ethnie".

A nation-state can according to Smith be defined as “a state claming to be a nation”, while a nation, can be defined as “a named population sharing an historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for its members”. An ethnie is in turn defined as ”a named population sharing a collective proper name, a myth of common ancestry, shared historical memories, one or more differencing elements of common culture, an association with a specific ‘homeland’ and a sense of solidarity for significant sectors of the population”. It should be noted that the boundaries of an ethnie can be quite recognisable even when not all of its characteristics appear at the same time. It is, in other words, not a question of a smallest common denominator. The modern Croatian ethnicity would be such a case. Its distinction from its Serb and Bosnian Muslim neighbours is marked by religious difference (Roman Catholic in contrast to Muslim or Orthodox Christian). In the north, it is however distinguished from Italians, Slovenes and Austrians mainly by language.

[edit] Selected publications