Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought
Cambridge University Press
9780521882910 - ERNEST GELLNER AND CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL THOUGHT - by Siniša Malešević and Mark Haugaard
Frontmatter/Prelims

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Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought

Ernest Gellner was a unique scholar whose work covered areas as diverse as social anthropology, analytical philosophy, the sociology of the Islamic world, nationalism, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, East European transformations and kinship structures. Despite this diversity, there is an exceptional degree of unity and coherence in Gellner’s work with his distinctly modernist, rationalist and liberal world-view evident in everything he wrote. His central problematic remains constant: understanding how the modern world came into being and to what extent it is unique relative to all other social forms. Ten years after his death, this book brings together leading social theorists to evaluate the significance of Gellner’s legacy and to re-examine his central concerns. It corrects many misunderstandings and critically engages with Gellner’s legacy to provide a cutting-edge contribution to understanding our contemporary post-9/11, global, late modern, social condition.

SINIšA MALEšEVIć is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His recent publications include Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism (2006), The Sociology of Ethnicity (2004), Ideology, Legitimacy and the New State (2002) and Making Sense of Collectivity (co-edited with Mark Haugaard, 2002).

MARK HAUGAARD is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Galway and was Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. His recent publications include Hegemony and Power (2006), Power: A Reader (2002) and Making Sense of Collectivity (co-edited with Siniša Malešević, 2002).

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Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought

Edited by

Siniša Malešević and Mark Haugaard

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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© Cambridge University Press 2007

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First published 2007

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

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ISBN 978-0-521-88291-0 hardback

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For our children Alex, Luka and Vanessa

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Contents

	Notes on contributors	page ix
	Acknowledgements	xiii
	Introduction: an intellectual rebel with a cause MARK HAUGAARD AND SINIšA MALEšEVIć	1
Part I Civil society, coercion and liberty		29
1	Ernest Gellner on liberty and modernity ALAN MACFARLANE	31
2	Predation and production in European imperialism MICHAEL MANN	50
3	Power, modernity and liberal democracy MARK HAUGAARD	75
4	Gellner versus Marxism: a major concern or a fleeting affair? PETER SKALNíK	103
Part II Ideology, nationalism and modernity		123
5	Nationalism: restructuring Gellner’s theory NICOS MOUZELIS	125
6	Between the book and the new sword: Gellner, violence and ideology SINIšA MALEšEVIć	140
7	Ernest Gellner and the multicultural mess THOMAS HYLLAND ERIKSEN	168
Part III Islam, postmodernism and Gellner’s metaphysic		187
8	Islam, modernity and science MICHAEL LESSNOFF	189
9	Truth, reason and the spectre of contingency KEVIN RYAN	227
10	Gellner’s metaphysic JOHN A. HALL	253
	Index	271

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Notes on contributors

THOMAS HYLLAND ERIKSEN is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and holds a Special Chair in Anthropology at the Free University of Amsterdam. He has published numerous books in Norwegian and English, including Ethnicity and Nationalism (1993/2002), Small Places – Large Issues (1995/2001), A History of Anthropology (2001, with F. S. Nielsen) and Engaging Anthropology (2006).

JOHN A. HALL is the James McGill Professor at the Department of Sociology, McGill University, Montreal. He is the author, co-author or editor of twenty-two books, including Powers and Liberties (1985), Liberalism (1989), Coercion and Consent (1994), International Orders (1996), Is America Breaking Apart? (2001), The State of the Nation (Cambridge, 1998) and The Anatomy of Power (Cambridge, 2006). He is currently completing an intellectual biography of Ernest Gellner.

MARK HAUGAARD lectures in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and was Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute. His publications include The Constitution of Power (1997), Power in Contemporary Politics (2000), (co-ed.) Making Sense of Collectivity (2002), (ed.) Power: A Reader (2002) and (co-ed.) Hegemony and Power (2006).

MICHAEL LESSNOFF recently retired as Reader in Politics and is currently Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Politics, University of Glasgow, Scotland. He studied at the University of Glasgow and Balliol College, Oxford. Among his publications are The Structure of Social Science (1974), Social Contract (1986), The Spirit of Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic: An Enquiry into the Weber Thesis (1994), Political Philosophers of the Twentieth Century (1999) and Ernest Gellner and Modernity (2002).

ALAN MACFARLANE is Professor of Anthropological Science at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s College. He is the author of over a dozen books, including The Origins of English Individualism (1978), The Riddle of the Modern World (2000) and Letters to Lily: On How the World Works (2004). His next book, Japan through the Looking Glass, will be published in 2007.

SINIšA MALEšEVIć lectures at the Department of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland, Galway. Previously he was a research fellow in the Institute for International Relations (Zagreb) and the Centre for the Study of Nationalism (Prague). He has also held visiting research fellowships in the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna) and the London School of Economics. His books include Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism (2006), The Sociology of Ethnicity (2004) and Ideology, Legitimacy and the New State (2002).

MICHAEL MANN is a Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of many prominent publications including a prize-winning series The Sources of Social Power, vol. I: A History of Power from the Beginning to 1760 AD, and vol. II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760–1914 (Cambridge, 1986, 1993). Recent highly successful books include Incoherent Empire (2003), Fascists (Cambridge, 2004) and The Dark Side of Democracy (Cambridge, 2005), winner of the 2006 Barrington Moore award of the American Sociological Association. He is currently working on the third volume of The Sources of Social Power: The Globalization of Capitalism, Empires and the Nation-State.

NICOS MOUZELIS is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He is author of many influential books including Modern Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment (1979), Politics in the Semi-Periphery (1986), Back to Sociological Theory (1992), Sociological Theory: What Went Wrong? (1995) and Bridges: Between Modern and Late Modern/Postmodern Theorising (forthcoming).

KEVIN RYAN lectures at the Department of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland, Galway, and is the author of Social Exclusion and the Politics of Order (2007). He is interested in social exclusion and marginality, and is currently researching contemporary innovations in the governance of social difference.

PETER (PETR) SKALNíK is a social anthropologist specialising in politics and Africa. He taught at Charles University, Comenius University of

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