My choice of a well-known philosopher for this assignment is Ernest Gellner, a Twentieth Century scholar and polymath. According to Chris Hann, Professor of Anthropology and Dean of Social Sciences, University of Kent: "Ernest Gellner was an outstanding theorist of modernity and a rare breed among late twentieth century scholars. He made major contributions in very diverse fields, notably philosophy and social anthropology." Professor Alan Macfarlane, King's College, Cambridge, said that Gellner's work, at it's core, was to try and understand the transformation of the world from " the agrarian religious world and the industrial scientific one" which Gellner said (Davis, Vol.32) " has always been for me absolutely central to understanding the world.".
Ernest Gellner was born December 9, 1925 in Paris, France. He was raised in Prague until 1938, at which time his Jewish German family escaped to England. He attended an English grammar school and went on to Oxford. He enlisted in the Czech army at the end of the war before returning to England to complete his education at Oxford, where he took a "First" professorship in PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics). In 1949 he joined the sociology department at the London School of Economics, becoming Professor of Philosophy with Special Reference to Sociology and finally Professor or Philosophy. He remained at LSE for 35 years before moving to Cambridge as William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology in 1984. In 1993, Gellner retired from Cambridge went to the Central European University in Prague where he headed the center for the study of nationalism. He was elected to the British Academy in 1974.
While he was at Edinburgh, he began a quest to determine which area of study he wanted to pursue. He tried sociological theory, was not pleased with symbolic logic and finally decided on Social Anthropology; "a (small) tribe studying tribes by earthly immersion field work.
THE CULTURE OF INDUSTRIALISATION The culture of industrialisation was a theory discovered by Ernest Gellner in Thought and change. ... Gellner therefore argued that nations do not in fact create nationalism, rather nationalist movements define and create nations. ...
The nationalism Hobsbawm writes of is in definition the same as that of Ernest Gellner "primarily a principle which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent". ... Nations are bound to be imagined, because they are so large and even within the smaller nations most people only know a handful of other people Gellner similarly states "Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist" . ... Ernest Gellner argued that it was an error to suppose that nations have always existed, or even that modern nations are very ol...
The first of these is the "modernist" theory outlines by Ernest Gellner, who argues that nationalism was uniquely a theory of the modern world and was crucially interlinked with industrialism and culture. ... In "Nations and Nationalism" Gellner attempts to answer the question of why nationalism is so pervasive in the modern world. ... Gellner emphasises education as an extremely important feature of modern nationalism. ... In Gellner's view "it is nationalism which engenders nations... Gellner's assumptions about industrialism can also be criticized. ...
Ernest Gellner explains that nationalism was born when agrarian societies underwent a transformation towards industrialization, causing members of the new industrial societies to form their self-identity through professional status rather than family lineage. ... Gellner argues that cultural pluralism was viable until the effects of industrialization produced modern "high cultures", with literate and education-based methods of communication, which characterized identity in terms of nationality and culture. ... Ernest Gellner argues that nationalist sentiment is especially sensitive when poli...
Through education, the mass of people are more inclined to be incorporated into what Gellner labels a high culture, affording them equal rights to political decision alongside the elite, whose role it is to manage, rather than dictate to and manipulate them. ... Gellner states that ethnic nationalism: " was active on behalf of a high culture not as yet properly crystallised, a mere aspirant or in-the-making high culture." Gellner, Ernest. ...
Nation Anderson in his book, "Imagined communities," goes on to try to define the impossible by describing nation as an "imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign (Anderson 1991: 6)." The relationship between state and nation is important, a state is...
International Human Rights as a concept, furthermore, as a good concept is not an agenda any sane person could dispute. Why then, are we inundated with human rights violations on a daily basis? What is the problem here? This is the question that plagues human rights discussion, and this is the question that many have addressed. Obviously, as I stated, the concept is sound, and most states agree in the form of signing UN declarations and covenants aimed at stopping human rights violations. ...
The Construction of the Palestinian Social Movement. In Order to remember I shall continue to carve All the scenes of my tragedy And all the stages of the disaster On the olive tree in the courtyard of my house. In order to understand the origin, development and current status of the contemporary movement for reconciliation within Israel, we must first take a look at the historical impact that Zion colonialism has had upon Israeli Arabs, or the Palestinians. While the terms colonialism and imperialism are familiar, the term Zion colonialism is argua...
