Cultural Nationalism in a Finnish-Hungarian Historical Context [antikvár]

Preface The more recent theories of nation and nationalism emphasize the "artificiality" of the concept of the nation, its reliance on the political, social, cultural or economic context. The idea of the constructed nature of nations conflicts with the perspective of essentialism which regards nations as basically determinate entities. Nationalism and national identity are also seen as ordinary social practices which are deeply embedded in the daily lives of common people. The novelty brought about by these theorizations has been that nationalism is defined not simply as a modern ideology, but as cultural universe shaping or even determining the modern social selfhood. The close link between culture and nationalism (building of nation states) is held to be important both in the constructivist theories and the ethno-symbolic interpretation. Systematic research in terms both of the main characteristics and the trajectory of cultural nationalism in a historical perspective was initiated in Hungary in 2013 by the research project supported by the National Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), under the title: Arts and Scholarship in the Service of Nationbuilding in the Nineteenth Century. The cooperative effort of more than twenty scholars representing almost all the humanities aimed at describing and analysing the evolution of a cultural nationalism contributing to the success of the building of the Hungarian nation-state, which took initially place within the context of the Habsburg Empire, later in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1867-1918). The main research questions to be addressed have been as follows: How were modern, institutionalized forms of discursive practices established, which resulted in the birth of the various academic disciplines, historical studies, archaeology, public law, literary science, philosophy, art history, musicology, or ethnography? It has also been important to demonstrate the institutional side of the development which put the emphasis less on the histories of the Academy, university, public collections or a number of cultural societies, but rather examined their special role in the disciplinarization process. The latter also pertains to the process of professionalization which defines elite and sometimes even popular culture, including both the arts and scholarship. Professional artists and scholars have exerted great influence on public life with the aim at increasing the national consciousness of the public. They thus became agents of nationalizing