Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity

ISBN-13: 9780192100177 / Angielski / Twarda / 2004 / 330 str.

Anthony Smith

Opis

'Unto thy seed I have given this land.' From the moment of God's covenant with Abraham in the Old Testament, the idea that a people are chosen by God has had a central role in shaping national identity.
Chosen Peoples argues powerfully that sacred belief remains central to national identity, even in an increasingly secular, globalized modern world. In this important new study, Anthony D. Smith goes in search of the deep Judeo-Christian roots of the many manifestations of national identity.
This rich and timely contribution to current debates about nationalism explains the complex historical reasons behind often violent modern conflicts around issues of land, culture, religion, and politics. Tracing the development of individual nations over many centuries, it offers fascinating insights into the religious and cultural foundations of countries such as Great Britain, the United States, Israel, France, and Germany. The argument draws on a wide range of examples from historic landscapes in Ireland, Switzerland and Egypt, myths of Arthurian Britain, Holy Russia, and Byzantium, through memories of a 'Golden Age', to the modern commemoration of the 'Glorious Dead', and of victims of war.

Recenzje

The book's content spans nationalist models and mythologies from Welsh to Siamese, and its chronological scope ranges from biblical times to the twentieth century. Yet the breadth is matched by depth, and the scholarship is never comprised.

O autorze

Anthony D. Smith is Professor of Ethnicity and Nationalism at the London School of Economics, vice-president of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism. He has spent over three decades exploring a variety of aspects of nationalism, and this book represents the culmination of a lifetime's work on the subject. His publications include Nationalism(1994) and Ethnicity (1996) (both co-edited with John Hutchinson) from the Oxford Readers series, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Blackwell, 1986), National Identity (Penguin, 1991), Nationalism and Modernism (Routledge, 1998), Myths and Memories of the Nation (OUP, 1999), The Nation in History (University Press of New England, 2000), and Nationalism (Polity, 2001).