War at the grassroots: The Great War and the nationalization of civic life.

摘要

This dissertation is chiefly concerned with the relationship among war, civil society, and the understanding of who properly is part of the nation. It focuses on the effect the Great War had on the character of civil society and on the construction of civic boundaries in three small towns---Park City, Utah, Rossland, Canada, and Boyle, Ireland. I emphasize how the state's mobilization for war produced a kind of nationalist awakening in each of these communities that, in varying degrees, generated the seemingly opposite tendencies of greater civic participation and heightened civic intolerance. In the process, war either solidified existing civic boundaries or reconfigured them according to how closely the nation and state were fused together---i.e. the degree to which the state was ontologically perceived as an embodiment of the nation. In Park City or Rossland, where a synthesis had largely been achieved between nation and state, significant segments within civil society rallied to the state's call to arms---constituting, generating, and supporting the state's power to wage war. In Boyle, Ireland, where nation and state were disjoined, national movements limited and constrained the state's war policy.; Political theorists have long held that war produces greater civic spirit and heightened social solidarity. More recently, however, a body of empirical research has challenged this thesis by showing that civic discord actually increases during times of war. The civic consequences are not so simple that they can be framed as one in which war either heightens civic spirit or leads to civic conflict. Rather, this dissertation explains why both of these consequences are logically present at the same time. War increases national sentiment that, in turn, integrates those who are imagined as representative of the nation, and excludes those who are regarded as either outside or dangerous to predominant nationalist imaginings.