Editing Nationalism (section)

=== Primordialist evolutionary interpretation ===
The primordialist perspective is based upon evolutionary theory.{{sfn|Motyl|2001|pp=272–273}}<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 4236409|title = Evolution, Mobility, and Ethnic Group Formation|journal = Politics and the Life Sciences|volume = 17|issue = 1|pages = 59–71|last1 = Goetze|first1 = David|year = 1998|doi = 10.1017/S0730938400025363| s2cid=151531605 }}</ref> This approach has been popular with the general public but is typically rejected by experts. Laland and Brown report that "the vast majority of professional academics in the social sciences not only ... ignore evolutionary methods but in many cases [are] extremely hostile to the arguments" that draw vast generalizations from rather limited evidence.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Kevin N. Laland|author2=Gillian R. Brown|title=Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2KcbFVBSxWYC&pg=PA2|year=2011|publisher=Oxford UP|page=2|isbn=978-0199586967}}</ref>

The evolutionary theory of nationalism perceives nationalism to be the result of the evolution of human beings into identifying with groups, such as ethnic groups, or other groups that form the foundation of a nation.{{sfn|Motyl|2001|pp=272–273}} Roger Masters in ''The Nature of Politics'' describes the primordial explanation of the origin of ethnic and national groups as recognizing group attachments that are thought to be unique, emotional, intense, and durable because they are based upon [[kinship]] and promoted along lines of common ancestry.{{sfn|Motyl|2001|p=273}}

The primordialist evolutionary views of nationalism often reference the evolutionary theories of [[Charles Darwin]] as well as [[Social Darwinist]] views of the late nineteenth century. Thinkers like [[Herbert Spencer]] and [[Walter Bagehot]] reinterpreted Darwin's theory of natural selection "often in ways inconsistent with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution" by making unsupported claims of biological difference among groups, ethnicities, races, and nations.{{sfn|Motyl|2001|pp=495–496}} Modern evolutionary sciences have distanced themselves from such views, but notions of long-term evolutionary change remain foundational to the work of evolutionary psychologists like [[John Tooby]] and [[Leda Cosmides]].{{sfn|Motyl|2001|p=268}}

Approached through the primordialist perspective, the example of seeing the mobilization of a foreign military force on the nation's borders may provoke members of a national group to unify and mobilize themselves in response.{{sfn|Motyl|2001|p=271}} There are proximate environments where individuals identify nonimmediate real or imagined situations in combination with immediate situations that make individuals confront a common situation of both subjective and objective components that affect their decisions.{{sfn|Motyl|2001|p=272}} As such proximate environments cause people to make decisions based on existing situations and anticipated situations.{{sfn|Motyl|2001|p=272}}

[[File:Maerz1848 berlin.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|Nationalist and liberal pressure led to the European [[Revolutions of 1848]].]]
Critics argue that primordial models relying on evolutionary psychology are based not on historical evidence but on assumptions of unobserved changes over thousands of years and assume stable genetic composition of the population living in a specific area and are incapable of handling the contingencies that characterize every known historical process. Robert Hislope argues:
<blockquote>[T]he articulation of cultural evolutionary theory represents theoretical progress over sociobiology, but its explanatory payoff remains limited due to the role of contingency in human affairs and the significance of non-evolutionary, proximate causal factors. While evolutionary theory undoubtedly elucidates the development of all organic life, it would seem to operate best at macro-levels of analysis, "distal" points of explanation, and from the perspective of the long-term. Hence, it is bound to display shortcomings at micro-level events that are highly contingent in nature.<ref>Robert Hislope "From Ontology to Analogy: Evolutionary Theories and the Explanation of Ethnic Politics: in Patrick James and David Goetze ed. ''Evolutionary Theory and Ethnic Conflict'' (2000) p. 174.</ref></blockquote>

In 1920, English historian [[G. P. Gooch]] argued that "[while patriotism is as old as human association and has gradually widened its sphere from the clan and the tribe to the city and the state, nationalism as an operative principle and an articulate creed only made its appearance among the more complicated intellectual processes of the modern world."<ref>{{cite book|author=G.P. Gooch|author-link = George Peabody Gooch|title=Nationalism|publisher=Swarthmore Press Limited|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.173640|year=1920|page=[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.173640/page/n47 5]}}</ref>