Been looking at nationalism over the last week. It's a pretty wide ranging topic, since its relevant to virtually every country or state. I've been focusing on its origins, which lie mid way through the 19th century, and some specific types of nationalism - Hindu and Arab in particular. Although one of the essay questions, is on nationalism, so this reading is directly relevant to that, I was looking at the other essay questions today and nationalism is a vital concept that needs discussing in those as well. Like the state, it is a central concept to international relations theory. Other possible essays could be on genocide or imperialism or totalitarianism and to understand these, I think you need to have a satisfactory understanding of nationalism first. So this work here is important and will do me good for the future. In fact if you look at each of the weekly topics, it's obvious now that they are strongly interlinked, whereas at the start of the course, I thought some were quite autonomous. So it's going to be necessary to do core reading and further reading each week as comprehensively as possible, regardless of the essay i answer.
As regards the essay: the question is based on whether class interests shaped nationalism. My initial thoughts on approach was that it would be to look at the genesis of nationalism and what social elements drove that forward, then see whether this was repeated elsewhere. I was thinking of dedicating the first half of the essay to comparing late 19th century European nationalism to Latin American nationalism then the second to 20th century forms such as Zionism and Arabism.
Also need to do some research on essay writing skills...... before I start.... although my essays over the last year have been pretty good, my structure and style is quite improvised and obviously could be improved....
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