The critique of methodological nationalism

Abstract

This article seeks to further our understanding of what methodological nationalism is and to offer some insights towards its overcoming. The critical side of its argument explicates the paradoxical constitution of the current debate on methodological nationalism – namely, the fact that methodological nationalism is simultaneously regarded as wholly negative and all-pervasive in contemporary social science. I substantiate the idea of this paradox by revisiting some of the most successful attempts at the conceptualization of the nation-state that have sought to transcend methodological nationalism in four disciplines: sociology, nationalism studies, anthropology and social psychology. The positive side of my argument offers a distinction between different versions of methodological nationalism with the help of which it tries to address some of the problems found in the literature. Theoretically, methodological nationalism is associated with, and criticized for, its explanatory reductionism in which the rise and main features of the nation-state are used to explicate the rise and main features of modernity itself. Historically, the article reassesses the problem of its prevalence, that is, whether methodological nationalism is a key feature of the history of the social sciences.

Fields of participation and lifestyle in England: revealing the regional dimension from a reanalysis of the Taking Part Survey using Multiple Factor Analysis

“…This includes Bennett et al's (2009) influential recent account of the UK cultural field, which adopts the conceptual framing and analytical approach of Bourdieu's influential study of cultural stratification in Distinction (1984), and in the process reproduces the latter's "methodological nationalism" (Chernilo, 2006;Johnson, 2013). Savage, Gayo-Cal, Warde, and Tampubolon (2005, pp.…”

Domestic and local influences in education policy

“…Nevertheless, local, regional and national variations more often characterize the field of education (Hall et al, 2015;Hopmann, 2008Hopmann, , 2015. Governance research that relies too much upon examining overall and national policies might lead to methodological nationalism (Chernilo, 2011;Sager, 2016), where the various levels of education are placed in the background and empirical, e.g. national, cases are seen as having a natural unity with no variation or fragmentation.…”

Fulfilling the Promise of Sociology: Some Steps for Generating Reflexivity in Organizations

“…Contemporary society shows tendencies towards cultural regress, a condition that Max Weber grasps in the metaphor of the 'iron cage', which refers to the imprisonment of dwarfed individuals by systems of technical control. Beck and Edgar Grande (2010) note that as most sociologists, through their prejudices and old routines, theorize society as a nation, which implies that they non-reflexively collect data at the national level, typically to be able to continue with their cross-national comparisons (Chernilo, 2011). Such un-scientific malpractices in scientific research enforce the national prejudice, and maintain established categories as well as dominant theories of society, as if they were the only possible ones.…”