Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

ZOLTÁN KÁNTORIn order to understand the nationalism of a national minority, oneshould analyze the nationalism of nations. It is not the difference of thesituation that matters, but the belief of a given group. Concerning thenationalizing dynamics of the titular nation, Brubaker says:Nationalizing nationalisms involve claims made in the name of “a corenation” or nationality defined in ethnocultural terms, and sharply distinguishedfrom the citizenry as a whole. The core nation is understood asthe legitimate “owner” of the state, which is conceived as the state of andfor the core nation. 8The claims of national minorities are also made in the name of a corenation or nationality, defined in ethnocultural terms, and are not relatedto citizenship. The difference in this case is that the “core” of the ethnoculturalnation is localized in the “external national homeland.” However,institutionally, a national minority is distinct from an ethnocultural nation.The national minority has no state of its own. Therefore, the leaders of thenational minority create a “surrogate state,” a system of political representationof the national minority, which, as mentioned, is conceived of inethnocultural terms.Usually, national minorities are defined without reference to anexternal national homeland. Such definitions emphasize only thata national minority is a minority in relation to the titular nationality, andcharacterize it by accentuating the quantitative aspect. The question ofthe ethnocultural nation, including all the members of the same ethnicgroup, is marginal. On the one hand, this is due to the preponderance oflegal and political definitions that concentrate on the rights of the nationalminority, and, on the other hand, to the perspective of social scientistswho analyze the transition to democracy, nationalism and ethnic conflictswithin a country by discussing only short-term processes and concentratingon the situational setting. To transgress the limitations of theseapproaches, one must analyze such questions in a historical perspective.In order to do this, one must look for a different approach and, onceagain, Brubaker’s definition is useful in this respect:A national minority is not simply a “group” that is given by the facts of ethnicdemography. It is a dynamic political stance, or, more precisely, a familyof related yet mutually competing stances, not a static ethno-demographiccondition. Three elements are characteristic of this political stance,or family of stances: (1) the public claim to membership of an ethnoculturalnation different from the numerically or politically dominant ethnoculturalnation; (2) the demand for state recognition of this distinct ethnocul-252