Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town

by Rogers Brubaker, Margit Feischmidt, Jon Fox

Situated on the geographic margins of two nations, yet imagined as central to each, Transylvania has long been a site of nationalist struggles. Since the fall of communism, these struggles have been particularly intense in Cluj, Transylvania's cultural and political center. Yet heated nationalist rhetoric has evoked only muted popular response. The citizens of Cluj--the Romanian-speaking majority and the Hungarian-speaking minority--have been largely indifferent to the nationalist claims made in their names.


Based on seven years of field research, this book examines not only the sharply polarized fields of nationalist politics--in Cluj, Transylvania, and the wider region--but also the more fluid terrain on which ethnicity and nationhood are experienced, enacted, and understood in everyday life. In doing so the book addresses fundamental questions about where it is, when it matters, and how it works. Bridging conventional divisions of academic labor, Rogers Brubaker and his collaborators employ perspectives seldom found historical and ethnographic, institutional and interactional, political and experiential. Further developing the argument of Brubaker's groundbreaking Ethnicity without Groups , the book demonstrates that it is ultimately in and through everyday experience--as much as in political contestation or cultural articulation--that ethnicity and nationhood are produced and reproduced as basic categories of social and political life.

Genres: Sociology

504 pages, Paperback

First published November 20, 2006

About the author

American sociologist, and professor at University of California, Los Angeles. He has written academic works on ethnicity, nationalism, and citizenship.

Reviews

[Alexandru · Rating 5 out of 5]

I red the book in Romanian translation. It's a paradigmatic book about how to study ethnicity in a lucid manner, avoiding reification. I only regret that the polemic dimension of the book (its disputes with different approaches in nationalism & ethnicity study) is tuned down - but for more on this, one could go to Brubaker's "Ethnicity without groups". For those interested in methodological issues, a very nice and quite explicit example on how to design a qualitative research, relying on interviews and group discussions, analysed with tools borrowed from conversation analysis (Schegloff is one of the main references here).

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

While at times rather repetitive (ah, academic writing...), this was a focused examination of embodied politics and ethnicity in Cluj, my adopted home whilst a Fulbrighter. Reading (most of) it while living in Cluj gave it a contextual relevancy that was both interesting and entertaining.

[Stefan Morar · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2006, Princeton University Press published one of the greatest works of Rogers Brubaker, "Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town". Its greatness comes from the originality of its methodological approach, the innovative theoretical conceptualization of understanding ethnicity through the rigorous empirical study, and its overall carefulness in operating with terms such as nation, ethnicity, group, category, or identity.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

This remarkable book makes good on its claims to reexamine scholarly notions of nationalism and begin to answer some basic questions about ethnicity: "where it is, when it matters, and how it works" (pp. 7). Even more significant than the test case of Transylvania are their attempts to overturn the idea of groups as the primary actors in constructing ethnicity. Central to their understanding is Eric Hobsbawm's admonition to examine nationalism from below, as well as from above (pp. 13). Pointing out the "groupist" reading of nationalism that tends to equate the positions of certain organizations claiming to speak for a nation with the nation itself, they reject the notion that each group is clearly delineated and distinct from the other. They use terms like "Romanian" to reflect ethnic self-identification, not to ascribe a set of characteristics to Romanians. They also contrast "nationality," which refers to political claims, with "ethnicity," which refers to everyday practices and understandings of identity (pp. 15).

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This scholarly study looks at the town of Cluj, in Transylvania, Romania as an ethnic study. The first half of the book describes the town's history, and the role of Romanians, Hungarians, and Germans during that history. The second half focuses on interviews with town residents of various ethnic groups. The author does a good job of describing the town, its history, and its residents, and explaining how ethnic identity is passed down through the generations. Although this is obviously a scholarly book, it is also easy to read and understand. I found it particularly interesting, as I had recently traveled to Transylvania, and found many of the author's observations to be very astute.

[Tolani · Rating 4 out of 5]

The early chapters give such a dense history of the tangled web of Central Europe you'll want to run for cover. But the later chapters give excellent insight into have ethnicity is crafted and maintained when the geographic boundaries no longer separate ethnicity and the nation and state fail to coincide. Useful toolkit of analytical questions for investigating any post-colonial multi-ethnic society in transition.

[Sara Fabulous · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting case study of a particular location, yet he claims to de-centralize ethnicity when he actually centralizes it. Although he does not manage to do all he claims to, it is still an interesting read.

[Benemint · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brubaker shows his theory of 'eventful nationalism' -- very thought-provoking piece!!