Max Weber and Anthony D. Smith on Race, Ethnicity, and Nation

Abstract

The relationship between the sociological categories of race, ethnicity, and nation, and indeed definitions of these terms themselves, continues to be a lively, if not fraught, topic. One of the first social scientists to engage in the investigation of these concepts was Max Weber (1864–1920). Though his work on the subject was incomplete at the time of his death, it nevertheless provided a useful starting point for later research. One of the recent scholars whose work echoes that of Weber was Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016). Through an analysis of the work of both on the subjects of race, ethnicity, and national identity, this paper will examine the similarities in the approaches of Weber and Smith and, in the process, suggest ways to continue the exploration of these important concepts.

1. Introduction

In the current literature on race, ethnicity, and nationalism, the work of the late Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) has been largely neglected. This is perhaps the result of various criticisms of his work, especially those targeting its alleged “Collectivist” or “Essentialist” nature. These criticisms have led to the marginalizing of Smith’s work by some scholars (important exceptions include Steven Grosby and John Hutchinson). Most critiques of Smith’s theories of nations and nationalism can be traced ultimately to his reliance on Durkheim’s work (though, importantly, Smith rarely references Durkheim directly). As one thoughtful critic of Smith put it, “A proper challenge of Smith’s theory has simultaneously to be a challenge of the entire Durkheimian tradition and its peculiar conceptualization of social life” (Malešević 2004, pp. 581–82).

Rather than exploring in too much detail these critiques; excavating the subterranean Durkheimian architecture of Smith’s theories, which is in any case widely acknowledged (See for example Malešević 2004; Llobera 1994; Friedland and Moss 2016); or seeking to defend Smith from his critics, this paper will instead explore the much less widely known or acknowledged (including by Smith himself) Weberian influences on Smith’s thought. Weber’s studies of race, ethnicity, and national identity, in particular, intersect in some interesting ways with Smith’s work. Perhaps most fundamentally is the understanding by both Weber and Smith that ethnicity and nation are subjective categories. That is, both ethnic groups and nations exist because of the group-feeling of their members rather than only objective (to say nothing of biological) factors in determining membership in the group. Along similar lines, Smith’s strong reliance on religion as an important aspect of the formation of both ethnic groups and nations, while clearly based on Durkheim, has important similarities to Weber’s own interest in such relationships. Another area of importance in the work of both is how each tried to understand how the concepts of race, ethnicity, and national identity related to Modernity. Both Weber and Smith seemed to consider national identity and nationalism as artifacts of Modernity. But both made room in their explorations for the possibility of races and ethnic groups existing in antiquity. Perhaps more importantly, Smith’s ethnosymbolist approach, which we will examine in more detail below, is anticipated by Weber’s postulating a connection between medieval and modern “nations”. Hence, this paper will argue that Weber’s work prefigures and anticipates many of the most important insights in Smith’s own project while differing from it in some significant ways. Finally, by putting Smith and Weber in conversation with each other, this paper hopes to suggest some new ways of thinking about the ideas each had about race, ethnicity, and national identity.

2. Smith and Ethnosymbolism

This is not the place for an exhaustive overview of Smith’s approach to the study of nations and nationalism. Probably his most important contribution to the field was his groundbreaking theory of the “ethnic origins” of nations. This complex and nuanced theory resembles in some very important ways some of the insights Weber had into the related categories of ethnic group and nation, as we will see below.

But before exploring the similarities between Weber’s and Smith’s ideas about race, ethnicity, and national identity, it might be useful to review very briefly Smith’s overall approaches to the concept of national identity, especially as they will help us evaluate the similarities but also the differences between his ideas and Weber’s.

Besides his important insights into the relationship between ethnicity and national identity, Smith’s theoretical approach, known (somewhat awkwardly perhaps) as “ethnosymbolism”, is especially noteworthy for bridging (to some extent at least) the positions of Modernists and Perennialists (Smith 2010, p. 63). These two approaches to the study of nations and nationalism (together, perhaps, with the Primordialists) have vied for dominance in the field since the 1980s, if not earlier. As the names imply, the Modernists (represented in the literature most notably by scholars such as Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, and John Breuilly) argue that both nations and nationalism are modern phenomena, emerging sometime during the eighteenth century or, occasionally, somewhat earlier (Smith 1998, 2000, pp. 27–34; 2009, pp. 4–7).

Perennialists, again as their name implies, sometimes admit that while nationalism might be modern, nations and national identity are very old, perhaps even ancient. Smith further divides the Perennialists into two sub-groups, which he calls the “continuous perennialists” and the “recurrent perennialists”. The former group argues that “particular nations have a long, continuous history, and can trace their origins back to the Middle Ages, or, more rarely, antiquity”. Recurrent perennialism, according to Smith, makes a “bolder” claim, that “though particular nations may come and go, the idea of nationhood itself is a universal, disembedded phenomenon, and as such could apply to many cultural or political communities in every age and clime” (Smith 2010, pp. 54–55).

Primordialism, associated more strongly with the work of Edward Shils and Clifford Geertz, argues that national (and ethnic) attachments are somehow natural, even organic. As Smith explains, the key primordialist insight is that “we, as individuals and members of collectivities, feel and believe in the primordiality of our ethnies and nations” (Smith 2010, p. 57. Emphasis in original). On the other hand, the important work of Steven Grosby has given primordialism historic depth and tangibility (Leoussi 2013, p. 1975).

3. Races, Ethnies, and Nations

As suggested above, Smith’s genius was to navigate a course between these different positions. He made room in his theories for the modernity of nationalism as an ideology and possibly even the modernity of national identity itself. However, he firmly rooted the origins of nations in ethno-cultural groups, for which he used the French term “ethnie”. He defined an ethnie as “a named human population with myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories, one or more elements of shared culture, a link with a homeland, and a measure of solidarity, at least among the elites” (Smith 2000, p. 65). Such groups, he argued, are very old, sometimes ancient, and are based on shared myths (especially myths of common origin) and, often, religion (Smith 2000, pp. 62–64). In Smith’s ethnosymbolic formulation, somewhat similar, as we will see, to Weber’s tentative theorizing, nations grow out of or are related to ethnic groups but at the same time represent different analytical categories in the evolution of ethnies. He defines a nation as “a named human population occupying a historic territory or homeland and sharing common myths and memories; a mass, public, culture; a single economy; and common rights and duties for all members” (Smith 1991, p. 40; 2000, p. 3).

Besides working out the relationship between ethnic groups and nations, Smith also grappled with the concept of “race” and where it fits into his ethnosymbolist framework. Influenced by Michael Banton’s history of the idea of “race” (Banton 1967), Smith often mentions race and racial identity in passing in his writings but engages with these categories in depth in his book Nationalism in the Twentieth Century. In his chapter devoted to an investigation of race, Smith, like Weber earlier (as we will see below), allows for the concept of race as a possible part of an ethnic identity. But perhaps more emphatically than Weber, he draws a sharp analytical distinction between race, ethnicity, and nation as social categories. Unlike the fluid cultural syncretism and historical evolution that characterize ethnie, “[Racism] has emphasized the ideas of centrality, group rightness and superiority, but dropped the cultural basis of ethnocentric prejudice. Instead, it has elevated to first place ethnocentrism’s rather secondary physical prejudices, and where before such prejudices were haphazard and ephemeral, racism now gives them a consistent and theoretical basis” (Smith 1979, p. 92). Athena Leoussi puts Smith’s comparison of nationalism and racism succinctly when she states, “Unlike nationalism, which, for Smith, is anchored in pre-existing historical ethno-cultural communities and subjective sentiments of solidarity and belonging, racism invents groups where they do not exist—either in nature (biology) or human association” (Leoussi, forthcoming).

Smith did, of course, recognize that historically, certain manifestations of nationalism were heavily tinged with racist ideas and concepts, and he devised the terms “Racist Nationalism” and “Nationalist Racism” to describe these phenomena. Smith argues that “[d]espite the inherent slipperiness of ideological concepts, we need to distinguish those cases where a nationalist movement utilizes racial dimensions to heighten its appeal from other cases where a predominantly racist movement makes use of national sentiments and ideas” (Smith 1979, p. 99). Into the former category, Smith puts the Anti-Dreyfusards of France and the nationalist ideas prevalent in nineteenth-century Germany, as well as various “pan” movements (e.g., Pan-Turkism and Pan-Slavism). In the latter category, Nationalist Racism, he singles out the ideology of Japan in the 1930s as well as that of the Apartheid regime of South Africa.

4. Religions, Ethnies, and Nations

Another very striking similarity between Weber’s ideas about ethnic and national groups is the role of religion. For Weber, religion can be one of several differentiating characteristics that can serve as a marker for an ethnic identity (though he is careful to note that it is not a necessary one). At the same time, Weber pointed out that the “masses” identify most closely with religion and language. In this context, Weber also noted, many ethnic groups explain their sense of “ethnic honor” by the religious notion of “chosen-ness”. As we will see below in the context of his explication of ethnic group formation, he observes that “behind all ethnic diversities there is somehow naturally the notion of the “chosen people” (auserwählten Volk) (Weber 1978, p. 391). Besides undergirding the sense of “ethnic honor”, a myth of “chosen-ness” implies that any number of particular markers of ethnic identity can be selected as signs of the group’s chosen-ness.

Smith developed this idea at considerable length. One of his expressions of this idea is very clear: “In a world of nations, each nation is unique, each is ‘chosen.’ Nationalism is the secular, modern equivalent of the pre-modern, sacred myth of ethnic selection” (Smith 1991, p. 84). As he put it: “modern concepts of national mission and national destiny are lineal descendants of the ancient beliefs in ethnic election, with their emphasis on the privileges and duties of the elect before God” (Smith 1999, p. 350). These national myths of “election” are themselves based on ethnic beliefs of “chosen-ness”. The most obvious example of this is the case of the ancient Israelites, but Smith points out that many other nations are rooted in ethno-religious myths of being a Chosen People. As he notes, “The strict covenantal form of election myth that was pioneered in ancient Israel was taken over from Israel and adapted to the belief systems of several Christian nations, whose cultures were shaped by the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, including the Armenians, the Copts, the Amharic Monophysites, Greek and Russian Orthodox, Irish Roman Catholics, Ulster Protestants, Presbyterian Scots, [American] New England Protestants, and Afrikaners” (Smith 1999, pp. 335–36). In Smith’s formulation, such groups (and many more) develop national identities, which draw religious myths of exceptionalism and election, in which they are divinely chosen to perform a powerful mission that is simultaneously national and religious. Importantly, Smith also explicitly draws on Émile Durkheim’s theory of religion to describe nationalism as a “surrogate religion” (Smith 2010, p. 38).

Smith thus saw religion, and especially myths of election or chosen-ness, as crucial components in the identities of many ethnies and hence important elements in national formation. His views on the relationship between nation and religion synthesize the insights of the two Classical theorists of human association and motivation, Durkheim and Weber. Both Durkheim and Weber recognized the powerful role of religion in the formation of ethnic groups and modern nations.

5. Weber on Race and Ethnicity

A review of the general outlines of Smith’s work provides a background for an investigation of Weber’s work on the subject of race, ethnicity, and national identity and will facilitate an exploration of the similarities and differences in their approaches. Many Weber scholars have argued that his work on nations and national identity lacked the sort of rigor that characterized most of his other endeavors.1 Others have likewise noted that his work on the subject is, at best, fragmentary and, at worst, incoherent.2 Yet, contrary to his critics, it can be argued that Weber’s work on the subject, while incomplete at the time of his untimely death, presents a coherent, if incomplete, theoretical framework, which in many ways resembles that of contemporary scholars of nations and nationalism. One of the challenges for anyone wishing to investigate Weber’s conceptions of nations and national identity is that his thinking on the subject changed over time. While his earlier work, before, say, 1900, was characterized by approaches to these concepts that were rather conventional for the time, they underwent a profound and ongoing change after he had mostly recovered from his nervous breakdown in 1903. His later work, right up until his death in 1920 was, in fact, often strikingly contemporary. While many of his insights during this later period seem to us nowadays as commonplace or even banal, at the time, they represented significant challenges to the received wisdom.

Perhaps most interesting in this respect is Weber’s interest in the complex categories of race, ethnicity, and nation.

At the outset, it is worth noting that Weber was formulating a scientific approach to the concepts of race, ethnicity, and nation, to say nothing of nationalism, as these terms were coming into use as social scientific categories. Though the word “nation” was very old, its use was ambiguous and applicable to many different kinds of human groups. The term “nationalism” (in the view of most scholars) is undeniably modern: its first appearance in a French dictionary, for example, dated only to 1874 (De Sauvigny 1970, p. 157). Hence, Weber (and his contemporaries) were engaged simultaneously in a scientific exploration and definition of these concepts and the social phenomena to which they referred. Smith himself noted that “If we look at the writings of classical sociologists from about 1800 to 1920 (and even many sociologists thereafter), we find little explicit attention paid to problems of nationality and nationalism, as if the subject did not merit special, or separate, investigation” (Llobera 1994, p. 135 quoting Smith 1983). Another scholar observes that “most classical sociologists touched on the questions of race, ethnicity, and nationalism but tended to mention them as aspects of other problems…A full recognition of the central significance of racism and nationalism by sociologists dates from the early decades of the present century [i.e., the twentieth]” (Stone and Dennis 2003, p. 39, n.1).

While there might not have been concerted social scientific interest in national identity and nationalism during Weber’s time, the same cannot be said of interest in the concept of race. As early as 1795, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), called the “Father of Physical Anthropology”, had developed a classification of humans into five “varieties”, later called “races”. Importantly, Blumenbach (who was a strong opponent of slavery) did not attribute superiority to any one of these races. A little later, the Scottish surgeon Robert Knox (1791–1862) also classified humans into different but unequal races, and his best-selling 1850 book, The Races of Man, contended that racial differences determined all major aspects of human history. Nevertheless, despite his hierarchical classification of the “races of man”, Knox, like Blumenbach, was an abolitionist.

These pre-Darwinian “scientific” approaches to race reached their apogee in 1855 with the publication of On the Inequality of the Human Races by Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882). His work laid the foundation for the “scientific racism” that was particularly popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and (unfortunately) continues in a diminished capacity today. Gobineau argued for the biological inferiority of some “races” over others, with the white or Aryan races being superior.

Just a few years later, Charles Darwin (1809–1882) published On the Origin of Species (1859), followed by The Descent of Man (1871). Although Darwin’s theory of evolution rejected the existence of different human species or races, his ideas were widely misinterpreted and proved tremendously influential for the further development of various racial (and racist) theories. To complicate matters, the terms “race” and “nation” were frequently used interchangeably, especially before the influence of Darwin’s work “separated the concept of race (and racism) from the that of the nation (and nationalism)” (Smith 1979, p. 93). Nevertheless, by the time Weber was working, the general thinking about the concepts of “race”, “ethnicity”, and “nation”, while drawing on this earlier body of work, had become heavily influenced by various interpretations of Darwinian evolutionary biology.

Weber’s earliest work on what we would now describe as “ethnicity” and “national” identity was clearly influenced by these ideas. According to Abraham, “Weber’s understanding of the concept of race is based on constructions of the Darwinian notion of natural selection designed to apply to the German nation’s struggle for survival” (Abraham 1991, p. 47). In his 1895 inaugural lecture at Freiburg University, upon being appointed a professor, Weber described the Polish agricultural workers of West Prussia as being not only culturally but “racially” inferior to their German counterparts. He argued that the German peasants were being out-competed by an “inferior race”. In Weber’s own words: “The German peasants…are not being pushed off their soil in an open fight with…superior enemies: They lose out, instead, to an inferior race in the…struggle of daily economic life”. Weber explained further since the Poles were “naturally” more suited to lower living standards than the Germans, it was “‘not in spite of, but because of their lower physical and mental habitus’ that the ‘Slavic Race’ won the upper hand over the German ethnic element” (Bodemann 1993, p. 225). Importantly, however, his “racialist” analysis and language, even at the time of his Freiburg address, was based on a non-biological understanding of the concept of race. As one writer on the subject observed, “Weber explicitly disclaimed any knowledge whether these qualities had always been inherent in the Slavic race or whether they had been acquired in the course of Slavic history” (Manasse 1947, p. 194). Or, to put it another way, Weber argued that “hereditary physiological characteristics of a given population are one among a number of different aspects of race. What is primary is the historical link of memory and the authority this confers on historical generations for the identity of their descendants” (Abraham 1991, p. 48). Over the following years, he further developed these ideas and completely abandoned and thoroughly ridiculed any sort of racialist pseudo-scientific approaches to questions of race, ethnicity, and nationality. According to one scholar on the subject,

“Through his later investigations [Weber] encountered more and more examples that showed the supposedly permanent race qualities to be the results of specific historical or cultural conditions…It now appeared to him that, scientifically, race was but a common denominator for a great variety of qualities, which groups, for certain psychologically understandable reasons, ascribed to themselves or other groups” (Manasse 1947, p. 221).

We can only speculate about the reasons for this decisive and important development in Weber’s thought, though Weber seems to have developed misgivings about “race” as a useful sociological category shortly after his address. Indeed, in 1896 he had already rejected the thesis, popular among many historians at the time (particularly Otto Seeck, 1850–1921), that the fall of the Roman Empire was the result of decline of the “superior” Roman racial stock (Winter 2020, p. 43). The initial onset in 1897 of Weber’s debilitating depression, with his resulting retirement from active academic life, and his long recovery, culminating in a trip to the USA in 1904 (during which he met with W.E.B. Du Bois) might have given him the time and perspective he needed to revise, and indeed completely depart from, his earlier views. His visit to the USA, according to some scholars, was crucial to his intellectual evolution, especially on matters relating to race and ethnicity: “Weber’s contact with Du Bois, travel through the South, his brief stay at Tuskegee, and the numerous conversations along the way all contributed to an enlarged horizon for his intellectual interests” (Scaff 2011, p. 112). By one account, “none of the problems confronting the United States seemed to him more serious than that of the American Negro” (Manasse 1947, p. 196). Indeed, his interactions with Du Bois, whom he admired greatly, seem to have been pivotal in his developing concept of race. As one scholar claims, “Weber, who once exclaimed that superior Germans had “turned the Poles into human beings”, was influenced by Du Bois to revise his views on inequality and square them with democratic values” (Morris 2015, p. 167).

Weber mentioned his meeting with Du Bois in the context of the 1910 inaugural meeting of the Deutsche Soziologische Gesellschaft in Frankfurt am Main, where the themes of race and nation were taken up. It is definitely worth keeping in mind as one reviews the proceedings of this congress, that, as mentioned above, the concepts of “race” and “nation” became objects of systematic investigation by the nascent social sciences during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as this meeting was taking place. Some of these conceptual investigations have had an enduring legacy and relevance to the present day.

The conference featured two of most preeminent thinkers on “racial science” of the time: the biologist Alfred Ploetz (1860–1940) and the sociologist Robert Michels (1876–1936). Both were active in the eugenics movement, and Ploetz coined the term “racial hygiene” (Rassenhygiene) (Proctor 1988, p. 17).

From the records of the conference proceedings, Weber emerges as very skeptical about the usefulness of the category “race”. At the 1910, conference he stated (perhaps more emphatically than was necessary):

“I dispute with the greatest determination that there is today just one single fact relevant to sociology, just one exact and concrete fact which can be traced back to a certain kind of sociological process in a really clear and definite exact way, and irrefutably to innate and hereditary qualities, which one race has and which another race does not have definitively—it must be underlined: definitively:—not, and I will continue to dispute it until this fact has been specifically pointed out to me” (quoted in Winter 2020, p. 43).

Importantly, in a heated exchange, Weber strongly disagreed with Ploetz’s contention that different “racial instincts” (Rasseinstinkten) were the cause for what he alleged were the inferior (Minderwertigkeit) intellectual and moral characteristics of Blacks. As part of his rebuttal to this argument, Weber recalled his meeting with W.E.B. Du Bois:

“I would like to confirm, that the most significant sociological scholar who exists in the American southern states, with whom no white person could compete, is a Negro—Burghardt Du Bois [sic]. A [Southern] Gentleman (Herr)… would have found him intellectually and morally inferior; we thought he behaved like any Gentleman” (Weber uses the English word) (quoted in Müller 2020, p. 557. Translation mine).

The concepts of race and nation were again under review at the second meeting of the German Sociological Society in 1912. Weber’s presentations and commentaries at the conferences formed the basis for most of his later work on the subject, much of which found its way, in one form or another, into his posthumously published Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society) in 1922. The participant list at the conferences reads like a roll call of early twentieth-century social scientists: Max Weber himself and his brother Alfred, Franz Oppenheimer, Werner Sombart, Ferdinand Tönnies, and other luminaries.

Weber also felt compelled to return, in the 1912 conference, to the old argument about the presence of “inferior races” leading to the fall of the Roman Empire. He called it a “scientific crime” (Wissenschaftliche Verbrechen) to use the vague concepts of “racial theory” (Rassentheorie) to try to explain socio-historical phenomena such as the fall of the Roman Empire. “Here Weber, like Du Bois, presented race and ethnicity as phenomena belonging to the cultural sphere rather than the biological. For both men, race became a socially constructed category affecting behavior and group formation. Du Bois and Weber stressed the importance of the subjective nature of race engendered by shared religion, language, tradition, and feeling of belonging” (Morris 2015, pp. 163–64).

We might sum up Weber’s ideas about race by saying that he “defined race in terms of inheritance of physical traits, as expected, [but] he stressed subjective meanings and beliefs. He concluded that it is not important whether racial differences are seen as based on biological heredity or cultural tradition. Even an emphasis on blood relationship does not necessarily derive from actual kinship” (Jackson 1982, p. 7). The importance of these “subjective meanings and beliefs” was crucial to Weber’s understanding of race but also of his formulation of the concept of ethnicity, as we shall see below.

During the same conference, he ventures into the territory of nations and national identity. In response to a presentation by Dr. Ludwig Hartmann (1865–1924), Weber had this interesting response:

“Hartmann explained that nationality did not appear to form a state either in antiquity or in the Middle Ages. That is true and the reason lies in the peculiarity of the state structure (der Eigenart der Staatsstuktur) of each of those times. Nevertheless, in the Middle Ages, the linguistic and ethnic sense of contrast (ethnisch bedingte Kontrastgefühl) was not absent” (Weber 1913, p. 190. Translation mine).

He elaborates this statement by referring to various examples from the Middle Ages, noting that

“English national pride is already observable in the fifteenth century with almost all the distinctive peculiarities that it still has today. It awakened at the same time in Italy and Germany. But language and descent had played their community-building role long before that… But because the State formations were different, these characteristics manifested themselves differently than they do today” (Weber 1913, pp. 190–91. Translation mine).

Weber was here anticipating two of the major research problems for the field of nationalism studies that was to develop in the late twentieth century: the historical roots of nations and the antiquity or modernity of nations themselves, a key problem, as will be remembered, addressed by Smith. For Weber, the ancient world was conscious of ethnic differences, and language and descent had brought people together into bounded communities since time immemorial. Weber specifically singles out “language and descent” (Sprache und die Abstammung) for playing a “community-building role”. Furthermore, Weber clearly thinks that modern nations such as England, Italy, and Germany are based on something from pre-modern times. Indeed, for Weber, England, Italy, and Germany, as ethnically conscious communities with a clear sense of pride in themselves, emerge already in the fifteenth century.

What he seems to be describing in this passage is what contemporary scholars of nations and national identity (including, as we have seen, Smith) would call “ethnic groups” or “ethnicities”. Indeed, if Weber’s work on nations and nationalism was tentative and incomplete, his thinking on ethnicity was more extensive and detailed.

Building on his ideas about race and racial identity, Weber was adamant that ethnicity had nothing to do with biological descent or “blood”. But what of the importance of “descent” in his presentation at the Sociological conference in 1912? Weber explained that while the biological fact of descent was not tenable, the myth of common descent was very important, if not crucial. As he put it,

“We shall call ‘ethnic groups’ (‘ethnische’ Gruppen) those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent (Abstammungsgemeinsamkeit)because of similarities of physical type or of customs (Habitus oder der Sitten) or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration; this belief must be important for the propagation of group formation; conversely, it does not matter whether or not an objective blood relationship exists (wenn sie nicht ‘Sippen’ darstellen)”3 (Weber 1978, p. 389).

Weber’s emphatic insistence that ethnic groups, while usually based on some belief in common descent, do not necessarily share an “objective blood relationship” ties in with some of his observations about the category of “race”. In writing about group identity, including the identities of different ethnic groups, he notes that “almost any kind of similarity or contrast of physical type and of habits can induce the belief that affinity or disaffinity exists between groups that attract or repel each other” (Weber 1978, p. 388). This means that for Weber, different “racial”, physical attributes can be a part of the formation of ethnic identity, but they are hardly the only, or even most important, of such attributes. Weber also nested his ideas about ethnic groups into his broader interest in “prestige” or status groups (Stände) (Bodemann 1993, p. 228). He argued that all human associations seek for themselves positions of “honor”. This played an important role in his description of ethnic groups. As Weber explained in the above quotation, the main element of an ethnic identity is a belief in common descent, whether such a belief is grounded in any actual historical reality or not. Elsewhere, he also notes the importance of language and religion as important potential contributors to the formation of an ethnic group. On the other hand, differences in dialect or religion do not necessarily “rule out feelings of common ethnicity” (Jackson 1982, p. 8).

The key to understanding which of these many elements seems to be most important in the formation and maintenance of an ethnic identity seems, in Weber’s formulation, to be closely tied to “one’s conceptions of what is correct and proper (schicklich) and, above all, of what affects the individual’s sense of honor and dignity…The conviction of the excellence of one’s own customs and the inferiority of alien ones, a conviction which sustains the sense of ethnic honor, is actually quite analogous to the sense of honor of distinctive status groups”. He continues: “The sense of ethnic honor is a specific honor of the masses (Massenehre), for it is accessible to anybody who belongs to the subjectively believed community of descent” (Weber 1978, p. 391).

6. Weber’s Ideas on Nation, National Identity, and Nationalism

Thus, Weber had developed at least a robust scientific scaffolding, if not a completely worked-out theoretical construct, of the concepts of “ethnicity”, “ethnic groups”, and “race” by around 1912. Around the same time, and continuing until his death, he began an interrogation of the concepts of “nation” and “national identity”. Because of their incomplete nature, these have long been vexing to students of Weber’s work. Much of the scholarship on Weber’s theory of nations and national identity has been influenced by Wolfgang Mommsen’s 1959 study of the subject, Max Weber und die deutsche Politik, 1890–1920. In this important work, Weber emerges as a strident German nationalist who nevertheless has a confused, even chaotic, understanding of the concept “nation”. The tension in Weber’s investigations in this regard break down to a distinction between nation as a political phenomenon and nation as a “cultural community” (Kulturgemeinschaft). For the purposes of this paper, an added, though usually not considered, question is the relationship between the concepts of “ethnic group” and “nation”, which I shall examine in due course below. A further contributing cause for the confusion among Weberian scholars concerning his approach to nations and national identity is the apparent disconnect between his academic work and his overtly political writings during World War I. One scholar, Jacob Lehne, attempted to crack this puzzle by historicizing Weber’s work on the concept of nation. That is, Weber’s understanding of the phenomenon changed over time. According to Lehne, Weber moved from a Volkisch or even racialist view of nations (heavily influenced by the views of the German Historical School) to one in which the nation is an (almost) completely political entity and finally tried to bring cultural elements back into his definition. Furthermore, according to Lehne, we simply have to acknowledge that “there is a substantial difference between Weber’s academic and political writings” (Lehne 2011, pp. 215–17, 234).

In this paper, I do not want to try to solve the challenge posed by Weber’s apparently inconsistent, or even confused, approach to the concept of nation but want instead to focus on the various ways he himself treated the problem and how these relate to his understandings of race and ethnicity. Like Anthony Smith, as we have seen, Weber regarded the concepts of ethnicity and national identity to be intimately connected: “The concept of the ‘ethnic’ group…corresponds…to one of the most vexing, since emotionally charged concepts: the nation” (Weber 1978, p. 395. Emphasis in original).

Before exploring how the terms “ethnic group” and “nation” “correspond” to each other, we should start by looking at what Weber had to say about his understanding of the term “nation”. One of the few instances where Weber offers a definition of what he means by nation is from 1912:

“Insofar as there is anything common behind this ambiguous word, it must be in the field of politics. The term nation could probably only be defined as: an emotion-based community (Gefülsmäßige Gemeinschaft) whose adequate expression would be a common state (eigener Staat), which therefore normally has the tendency to produce just such a state. The causal components however which lead to the emergence of this national feeling can have very different roots” (Quoted in Lehne 2010, p. 224).

Weber, as we shall see, elaborated elsewhere what some of these “very different roots” were, but they variously included such attributes as religion, language, and history. While the relative importance of these “roots” in different cases could vary, he consistently rules out “objective” traits such as “race” or kinship among them. Indeed, as in his treatment of ethnicity and racial identity, “Weber was…skeptical towards all attempts to ground national identity in psychical or physical qualities which are either ‘natural’ or ‘have been bred into it in the course of history’” (Norkus 2004, p. 408).

Weber’s definition of “nation” is intriguing because, according to it, while a nation is conceived as a community based on some sort of common feeling, it is ultimately a political project. Drawing on his experience at the Sociological conferences, Weber elaborated on his definition in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: “[F]eelings of identity subsumed under the term ‘national’ are not uniform but derive from diverse sources… Hence, the concept [of nation] seems to refer…to a specific kind of pathos which is linked to the idea of a powerful political community of people who share a common language, or religion, or common customs or political memories (Sprach-, Konfessions-, Sitten-, oder Schicksalsgemeinschaft); such a group may already exist or it may be desired” (Weber 1978, p. 398). Here, and elsewhere in the same work, Weber does seem to acknowledge that national identity has something to do with culture. “The significance of the ‘nation’ is usually anchored in the superiority or at least the irreplaceability, of the culture values that are to be preserved and developed only through the cultivation of the peculiarity of the group” (Weber 1978, p. 925). Thus, the concepts of “prestige” and “Massenehre”, which Weber already used as characteristics of ethnicity, appear again as markers of national identity.

So far, the links between Weber’s conceptualizations regarding ethnic groups and nations are very close. As one scholar noted, “the concept of nation tends to overlap with that of ethnicity in that whatever is felt to be common in nations is thought to derive from descent” (Jackson 1982, p. 7). Not only do nations and ethnic groups share the feature of a belief in common ancestry, but they also are both, in a way, “imagined communities”.4 To put it another way, a nation is a subjective concept (a construct of the human mind) rather than a stable objective entity (Leoussi 2013, p. 1959). Specifically, Weber seemed to think of the nation as an “idea” or “concept” (Begriff) rooted in a particular belief in a unique (national) culture. “The significance of the ‘nation’ is usually anchored in the superiority, or at least the irreplaceability, of the culture values that are to be preserved and developed only through the cultivation of the peculiarity of the group” (Weber 1978, p. 925). Here is yet another similarity between nations and ethnic groups: the feeling each has of superiority against other such groups.

Importantly, Weber noted that “If the concept of ‘nation’ can in any way be defined unambiguously, it certainly cannot be stated in terms of empirical qualities common to those who count as members of the nation. In the sense of those using the term at a given time, the concept undoubtedly means, above all, that it is proper to expect from certain groups a specific sentiment of solidarity in the face of other groups. Thus, the concept belongs in the sphere of values” (Weber 1978, p. 922. Emphasis mine).

This is a crucial aspect of Weber’s concept of national identity because it qualifies his other remarks about the importance of the nation as a Kulturgemeinschaft. To illustrate what he means, he uses the example of the German-speaking population of Alsace (conquered by Germany in 1870 from France). Though German-speaking (an “empirical quality”), most of the population had a French national identity (Weber 1978, p. 396). Weber explains this by noting the importance of historical memories in the formation of national identities: “It is this “community of memories” [Erinerungsgemeinschaft] which…constitutes the ultimately decisive element of “national consciousness” (Weber 1978, p. 903). He describes the German-speaking Alsatians, though “objectively” part of the German nation, as having a French national consciousness because they identify with the historical memories of France, especially the Revolution.

His use of the German-speaking Alsatians here is interesting on a number of levels. For one thing, it is an example of the limits of any kind of Kulturgemeinschaft, or “ethnicity”, in the construction of a national identity. Ethnicity, Weber makes clear, can contribute to a national identity, but it need not do so. “The sentiment of ethnic solidarity by itself does not make a ’nation’” (Weber 1978, p. 923).

Weber’s work on defining and analyzing the concepts of nation and national identity remind us of his comments at the Second Sociology Conference in 1912. Recall that he argued that linguistic and ethnic differences were already building communities and manifesting themselves in “national pride” as early as the fifteenth century. How do those statements relate to what we have so far explored in his treatment of ethnicity and national identity?

I think that the key to answering this question is embedded in another part of his statements in the 1912 conference. He notes the “peculiarity of the state structure” in antiquity and the Middle Ages and that “state formations were different, [thus] these oppositions manifested themselves differently than they do today”. These qualifying remarks point to [the centrality in Weber’s thinking on these matters] Weber’s belief in both the essentially political nature of nations and national identity, and their essential modernity: he argues that the “English” and “Germans” of the Middle Ages were not the same as their modern namesakes because of differences in their “state formations”. Weber is once again pointing to the modernity of the national state. Weber clearly regarded the national state as one of the ideal types that (along with other elements) defined modernity. Among the nine elements that Weber enumerates as markers characteristic of a modern society, one is “citizenship with rights and obligations within the national state”5 (Shils [1987] 1997, p. 228).

Hence, Weber seems to have been moving toward a theory of national identity and perhaps nationalism itself. According to this theory, the essential elements of national self-consciousness are very old, perhaps perceived as ethnicity, but nations, as we currently understand them, are modern and are part of the development of the modern state. One Weberian scholar puts it somewhat differently:

“Weber’s political-sociological concept of the nation does not fit neatly into the frame of the dichotomy of modernism and perennialism. Weber would argue that the phenomenon of nation is more characteristic for modern times than for premodernity. However, he does not consider this phenomenon as specifically modern. Nations can be formed everywhere where there exist states competing for the prestige of power and culture, and involving in these contests broad masses of their dependents or citizens” (Norkus 2004, p. 411).

This statement seems more or less consistent with what this paper has so far presented. Importantly, however, this formulation of Weber’s ideas about the modernity of nations does not consider his own important caveat about the nature of the modern state or modern “state formations”. Perhaps these are the only kinds of states that can mobilize “broad masses of their dependents or citizens”? Furthermore, this evaluation of Weber’s ideas about nations does not venture to explore systematically the sociological or anthropological scaffolding upon which the nation is built. I would contend that, as our investigation in this paper suggests, this is where ethnicity comes into the picture. This is also, as it happens, where we find the intersection between Weber and Smith.

7. Conclusions: Weber and Smith

While this paper has focused on similarities between the work of Weber and Smith, they of course differ from one another in some very significant ways. First and foremost, Smith’s level of analysis is much deeper and more sophisticated than Weber’s. This is hardly a surprise; Weber, as noted in the beginning of this paper, was working practically at the dawn of the scientific study of the concepts of ethnicity and national identity, while Smith was engaging with a field that, in the 1980s and 1990s, was in the midst of major theoretical developments. Along the same lines, Smith developed in far more detail than Weber a theoretical outline for how pre-modern ethnies develop into nations. These different processes are tied together with different sorts of state formation depending on the particular characteristics of the type of ethnic group concerned.

As in Weber’s theorizing, Smith’s categories of ethnie and nation overlap in many important ways, especially in “sharing common myths and memories” of different kinds, especially, in the case of an ethnie, a myth of “common ancestry”. The differences, as with Weber, seem to rest on emphasis on the social and political organizational features of the ideal typical nation, for example a “mass, public culture; a single economy; and common rights and duties for all members”. One is certainly reminded here of Weber’s mention of the different “state formations” that set aside the communities of fifteenth-century Englishmen, Italians, and Germans from those of our own day.

Hence, though Smith is seldom described as a Weberian, his ethnosymbolic approach to, and analysis of, the ethnic origins of nations bear a strong resemblance to Weber’s (admittedly incomplete) work on the subject of race, ethnicity, and nation. Most important, it seems to me, is the basic rejection by both of any biological or ”objective” differences between self-described members of ethnic groups or nations. In this sense, self-identification in any of these three categories is characterized by a high degree of subjectivity and self-ascription. On the other hand, both Weber and Smith note that membership in a national community is also predicated on a sense of solidarity with other members of the group.

A final interesting similarity between Weber and Smith, it seems to me, is the (probably unintentional) blurriness of their boundaries between “ethnic group” and “nation” or, more accurately perhaps, between “ethnic” and “national” identity. Their definitions of each are similar and, indeed, overlapping. As Steven Grosby wryly notes, “the development of his thought reveals that, for Smith, there is in fact no sharp distinction between ethnicity, what he designated an ‘ethnie,’ and nation” (Grosby 2022, p. 20n15). Whether Grosby overstates his case I will leave to the reader to decide. But at the very least, this quotation points to the undeniable similarities between the analytical approaches to these categories in the work of both Smith and Weber.