Beyond Methodological Nationalism

Beyond Methodological Nationalism is the general topic of the first ever Annual Meeting of the newly found Society for the Study of the Past. 

Methodological nationalism – or the idea that “the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world” (Wimmer and Schiller, 2002) – remains a constant for historians, in spite of movements towards globalism, claims to decolonise and an increasing awareness of the role that social construction plays in the categories that are used for the writing of history. It functions as the calling card of Eurocentrism, projecting a Westphalian world of nation states into the distant past, and setting the course for an unavoidably ethnonationalist future. It restricts our collective imaginations, rendering alternative political entities – like caliphates, or federations or notions of ‘antinationalist anticolonialism’ – aberrations from the nation state model. It leads to the naturalising of borders, causing death and cruelty to be inflicted on refugees and migrant people as well as all those who sit outside of hegemonic racial-national constructions of identity within a nation state. Many have written that methodological nationalism is misleading or unhelpful – but it is still common to see history books take for granted the antiquity of much later ideas of nation. This conference brings historians from all periods and areas together to organise against it.

To sign up to attend the meeting, please click here – all are welcome, please see below for the provisional programme.