Nations & Nationalism conference

Nations and Nationalism Fifteenth Anniversary Conference
National Identity in Old and New Europe: Intellectuals, Culture and Popular Mobilisation

London School of Economics
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE

Website: www.lse.ac.uk/asen

The purpose of this Conference is to assess how far the intellectuals and their culture who had been so critical for
popular mobilisation in the national cause in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe, are still active and
relevant in today’s Europe, both in the East and the West, and whether they continue to play a significant role in
forging ‘national identities’ and mobilising ‘the people’ across contemporary Europe. Questions of this kind assume
we can usefully speak of both ‘national identity’ and ‘popular mobilisation’, and their classical ideological connection.
For this reason, the Conference needs first to address the theoretical issues involved, before considering the past and
present trends and roles of the intellectuals and ‘the people’ in Europe.
This means there will be two sessions. In the morning, Dr. Sinisa Malesevic and Professor Anthony Smith will debate
the utility of the concepts of national identity and popular mobilisation, and their classical relationship, as posited in
much of the literature on nationalism. In the afternoon, Professor Joep Leerssen will survey and analyse the role of
intellectuals and culture in forging nations in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe, to be followed by Professor
Montserrat Guibernau who will assess their role in popular mobilisation and in the creation or reinterpretation of
‘national identities’ in contemporary Western Europe, and by Professor Bernhard Giesen who will perform a similar
analysis for their role in both tasks in contemporary Eastern Europe.

conference nationalism politicsconference nationalism politics Published: 9.30.09 / 3pm
Tags: conference, nationalism, politics