Catherine Hezser finds that John A. Hall’s biography of one of the most prominent social anthropologists of our time provides fascinating reading on issues and debates which are still of utmost importance. Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography. John A. Hall. Verso. 2011. Paperback edition

Hezser, Catherine

English

LSE Research Online

blogs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2012/06/21/ernest-gellner-an-intellectual-biography/Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual BiographyCatherine Hezser finds that John A. Hall’s biography of one of the most prominentsocial anthropologists of our time provides fascinating reading on issues and debateswhich are still of utmost importance.Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography. John A. Hall. Verso. 2011. Paperbackedition.Find this book:  For more than twenty years the social anthropologist and philosopherErnest Gellner (1925-95) was one of the most prominent, prolific, andcontroversial professors at LSE. His own life experiences as a CzechJew who became a British citizen and moved back to Prague in hisfinal years had a major impact on his views on nationalism, modernity,and personal identity. Wherever he was, he felt like the quintessentialoutsider who could not fully identify with any one culture or society:Jewish but entirely disinterested in religion, Czech but wary of bothnationalism and Marxism, British but not posh and class-consciouslike other Oxford students, he chose intellectual honesty over easybelonging, clear-cut identity, and simple categorization. John A. Hall’sexcellent biography succeeds in drawing connections betweenGellner’s life and work, between concrete experiences and theoreticalanalyses and models. Hall, who is professor of comparative historicalsociology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, knew Gellnerpersonally and had access to the Gellner family archive in addition tohis writings.Gellner grew up in Bohemia at the time of the early Czech republic, when the leaders tried to create aCzech national identity amongst their subjects.The time was marked by nationalism andindustrialisation, phenomena which greatly interested Gellner and became the focal points of histhinking. Belonging to a later generation of Bohemian Jews than Kafka, Gellner experienced bothGerman and Czech nationalism but could imagine belonging to Czech culture, despite his family’sloyalty towards the Habsburg empire. Gellner maintained that for Jews of his generation threepossibilities existed: assimilation, Zionism, or cosmopolitanism. He knew that all three options wereproblematic and never fully adopted one of them. He saw the attempt to return to particular cultural rootsas an illusion, since these cultural roots were almost always invented and romanticised by those whopropagated them. He accepted the tension that existed between ethnonationalism andcosmopolitanism, being aware of the power and weakness of both of these movements.When the Sudentenland became part of Nazi Germany in 1938, his family left Prague for England. Theexpulsion of the Sudetendeutschen und the killing of Jews in the Holocaust convinced him that the fateof national minorities were either assimilation, expulsion, or death. Towards the end of the SecondWorld War he joined the Czech army but returned to Britain when communists took over. He wasintellectually interested in Marxism but opposed to communist ideology. At Oxford, he became a“natural anthropologist” (30), an outside observer of the societies in which he lived.Gellner’s major contribution to scholarship is the socio-economic analysis of nationalism. His book,Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983), was declared one of the hundred most influential bookswritten since the end of the war. In this book he offers a general theory of nationalism which connectsnationalism with industrialisation. He believed that nationalism, that is, the creation of a fictivehomogeneity amongst people who lived in one territory, was created at the end of the nineteenthcentury because the social and cultural units of the past could not support modern societies. Modernityfunctionally required the nation state, which was absent from most of history. Tribes and peasantcommunities were too small, empires such as the Habsburg and Ottoman empires too large to supportindustrialisation and to bring about affluence and a high standard of living. National homogeneity wasnecessary for the success of a society, since it enabled economic flexibility, development, and welfarespending.Gellner’s theory has been criticised as functionalist and optimistic. It was developed at the time ofreconstruction after the Nazi period. Critics have claimed that (forced) homogeneity  does not alwayslead to progress and affluence (cf. the Soviet Union and African states). In the Balkans, homogeneityled to territorial divisions, expulsions and killings. There seems to be a certain contradiction betweenGellner’s optimistic view of nationalism before and after the Second World War and the way Jews weretreated by the Nazis during the Third Reich, when assimilation was not an option and the extinction of awhole population group was based on believed ethnic dissimilarity only. The claim that a modern stateneeds full cultural homogeneity to succeed can also be challenged from other perspectives: India, forexample is successful as a state-nation rather than a nation-state. Diversity is recognized and a limitedmeasure of unity sufficient. Similarly, contemporary British society is culturally and ethnically diverse.One could almost argue against Gellner that (post-)modern societies need to be diverse rather thanhomogeneous to adapt and succeed globally.Another major focal point of Gellner’s studies is Islamic society. He has, in fact, been named a socialanthropologist of religion on the basis of his studies into Maroccan Berber groups in the 1950s and -60s and North African Muslim society in later years. In his book, Muslim Society (Cambridge, 1981)Gellner developed a general theory of Islam. He argued that Islam survived and was immune tosecularisation because its ideology was stronger than the political life of any particular Islamic state.Social change in a particular region did not challenge the normative basis. He used Algeria as a modelfor Islamism as a substitute for industrialisation and secularisation. In contrast to European nationstates, Islamic society entered modernity through its high tradition of law, literacy, and discipline. Thesetraditions made it secularisation-resistant. Critics have pointed out that Gellner essentialised Islam, thathe presented an a-historical theory which did not pay sufficient attention to differences amongst Islamicsocieties. The view that modern Islam is a functional equivalent of nationalism without undergoingindustrialisation and secularisation fails to point us what modernity in Islam really consists of.Gellner was very much opposed to all kinds of relativism and “value-pluralism” and accused fellowscholars (e.g., I. Berlin) of too liberal views. A liberalism which tolerated the incommensurability ofvalues was considered wrong, since it could not express revulsion against certain practices (e.g.,slavery, female circumcision, torture). Similarly, post-modernism allegedly led to relativism. Hepolemicised against E. Said’s Culture and Imperialism: Muslim society was not held back by westernorientalist ideology, as Said claimed. Rather, western imperialism was inevitable on the basis ofcertain technological advances which Islamic societies lacked.John A. Hall’s biography of one of the most prominent social anthropologists of our time providesfascinating reading on issues and debates which are still of utmost importance. The author provides aclear and detailed account of the development of Gellner’s thought and critical assessments of hisarguments and theories. The book can be recommended to anyone interested in politics, anthropology,and socio-economic theory. The text is supplemented by some photographs and a general index butlacks a bibliography.——————————————————————————————-Catherine Hezser is Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of the Study of Religions atSOAS. She received her Ph.D. from JTSA, New York and a Dr. theol. from the University ofHeidelberg. Read reviews by Catherine.Related posts:1. Out-of-place Obama: an intellectual history of a misunderstood president (6.2)

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