Memory and modernity: reflections on Ernest Gellner's theory of nationalism

This is a sad and strange occasion. I have been asked to stand in the place where my teacher, Ernest Gellner, was to stand today and to continue an unfinished dialogue which we have been conducting for much of our scholarly lives. I have been asked to speak to you about Ernest’s theory of nationalism, the great issue of the modem world with which he grappled all his life and to which he made so unique and profound a contribution. Though I had heard Ernest lecture in 1964 and 1965, it was only when he agreed to supervise my Ph.D. thesis in 1966 that I came into close contact with him on a regular basis. Since that time, Ernest has been in my thoughts as a teacher and scholar, and above all as a pioneer of the sociological study of our common passionate interest in nationalism. (And in our last meetings, both of us shared the hope of seeing a sister Institute dedicated to the study of nationalism being created at LSE, similar to that which Ernest directed at the Central European University in Prague. But that hope seems unlikely to be realised). Though I had read Wor& and Things at Oxford, my first real encounter with Ernest’s thought was with his second book, Thought and Change (1964), especially the chapter on nationalism. This chapter has largely set the terms of subsequent debate in the field. From this encounter, and my subsequent work under Ernest’s supervision, I took away four fundamental lessons in the study of nationalism. The first was the centrality of nationalism for an understanding of the modem world. The fact that Ernest took up the issues of nationalism in the 1960s and that he kept returning to them, when most social scientists were interested in Marxism, functionalism, phenomenology, indeed everything but nationalism, and the fact that he established a Centre for the Study of Nationalism in Prague devoted to research and latterly teaching in this field,