Nationalism is a form of tribalism

The argument

A nation can be defined as a body of people united by common descent and culture, often inhabiting one specific area. So defined, the loyalty people feel towards such a body is often seen as inherent rather than manufactured: people like to be with others who share their religion, language and cultural practices, and that preference leads them to seek to live together. The nation state is then the product of this impulse rather than its source — it is what nationalism builds, which is the opposite of the usual claim that nationalism is what states cultivate in their populations. The prehistoric record is offered as evidence that the impulse came first. In prehistoric societies this preference led to conflicts between different nations who believed their own practices were superior. Those conflicts arose without any state apparatus to generate them, and the argument reads the formation of nation states as a response: states emerged to resolve such conflicts, allowing people to live within their own national group. The tribalism is the prior condition and the political structure the remedy. A present-day case is taken to confirm the same ordering. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy suggests that modern nationalism is particularly prominent amongst groups who do not yet have their own state, such as Palestinians and Kurds. If nationalism were produced by states, it should be weakest exactly where no state exists, and it is instead among the strongest there. That pattern indicates nationalism must predate the formation of a nation state, because otherwise there would be nothing to drive a stateless people towards seeking one — and nation states of that kind would never develop at all.

Context

Tribalism has existed for millennia and can be traced back through history as existing before what we would consider a nation state or even a proto-nation state.

Premises

Counter-arguments

What creates these loyalties? They are often a result of similar groups living together in proto-nation states like Greek city states, so nationalism is developed by this proximity, which is increased when formal nation states are developed. Without this proximity, tribal groups would not feel the same loyalties to each other, suggesting that states and geographical closeness create the conditions for nationalism.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Defining a nation by common descent and culture builds the conclusion into the definition; loyalty to kin, village or faith is not the same as loyalty to a nation, and the premise treats the two as one thing without argument. [Rejecting P2] Palestinian and Kurdish nationalism are modern movements that arose within and against existing states, so they show nationalism without a state of one's own rather than nationalism before states existed — and the counter's point that proximity within polities generates such loyalties reverses the direction of the claim.

Framing

Tribalism is a prehistoric phenomenon which predates anything resembling a modern nation state, providing strong evidence, with a significant precedent, that nationalism existed before nation states, which are formed as a result of nationalist feeling.