Abstract
The chapter explores the innovative potential of trans-actional analysis in the field of Nationalism Studies. We do it via two case studies in meta-methodological analysis. First, we discuss the canonical “Warwick debates” (1995–1996) between the nationalism theorists Anthony Smith and Ernest Gellner. The two influential scholars disagree over the patterns of nation formation and use Estonians as a test case in their debate. We employ the categories “self-action” and “inter-action” to characterize the methodological premises of Smith’s and Gellner’s accounts of how the Estonian nation developed, and compare their approaches to an interpretation that would result from trans-actional analysis. Secondly we consider Rogers Brubaker’s influential “anti-groupist” approach to ethnicity as an example of trans-actionalism. We ask whether his reduction of focus is something intrinsically required by trans-actionalism with its close-up perspective or whether trans-actional analysis could also help to gain insight into large scale political movements and processes of nation-building.
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Notes
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See Bevir (2008) for the notion of meta-methodology. Basically, of course, it includes reflections on the underlying ontological and epistemological premises of methodological thinking.
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Translation from Estonian by P. Peiker.
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The compiler/author of the verse epic Kalevipoeg F. R. Kreutzwald (1803–1882) was a son of Estonian-speaking serfs, however eventually received a university degree in medicine (in German). Kalevipoeg (1857–1861) is not based on a particular single folk source, rather Kreutzwald put together disparate materials, including those of his own invention. In folklore the main character Kalevipoeg is a trickster figure, sometimes behaving quite unpleasantly for modern tastes, in the epic he becomes a heroic farmer-seafarer-warrior king who maintains some trickster features (cf. Järv 2001, pp. 68–70).
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Acknowledgements
We thank George Schöpflin for his comments on a previous version of this paper. Writing this chapter was supported by the Estonian Research Council with the personal research funding granted to the project PUT1485 A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems and by the European Research Council with the grant to the project TAU17149 “Between the Times”: Embattled Temporalities and Political Imagination in Interwar Europe.
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Selg, P., Peiker, P. (2020). There Is More to Groups of People Than Just Groups and People: On Trans-Actional Analysis and Nationalism Studies. In: Morgner, C. (eds) John Dewey and the Notion of Trans-action. Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26380-5_3
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