Hudson Meadwell
Biographic Data
| ID | 190786 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hudson Meadwell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hudson |
| FAMILY NAME | Meadwell |
| SIGNATURE | MEADWELL H |
| AFFILIATIONS | McGill University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4898-7409 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 140 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Durkheim and realism
This article examines Durkheim's relationship to realism. I argue that there is enough prima facie evidence of realist commitments in his work that our task should be to consider what kind of realist Durkheim was. I discuss, first of all, Durkheim's epistemics and follow that analysis with a discussion of metaphysical realism in his texts. The first part of the paper covers a wide range of his work; the second part focuses primarily on The Elemen…
Endogeneity and qualitative political analysis: Debates about method or debates about ontology
Qualitative political analysis has made substantial methodological progress in the last 25 years. This article examines the contributions to this progress made by the work of three American social scientists (King, Keohane, and Verba, 2021 [1994], hereafter KKV) and the responses that their work provoked. The article identifies a recurring ambiguity in this methodological literature. In the quantitative tradition to which KKV want to hold qualita…
The importance of being Ernest: A Comment on Riga and Hall
Ernest Gellner's work on nationalism continues to draw a mix of both admiration and criticism. In a recent article, Riga and Hall find fault with a new line of criticism of Gellner's theory of nationalism that I introduced in a series of articles in this journal. They claim that I have merely repeated a well‐known criticism of Gellner – that his work is functionalist. This would be convenient for their arguments if it were true. While I would agr…
The Irish Meet the Welsh Wizard: Character, Narrative, and Political Rationality in the Formation of the Irish Free State
The negotiations that led to the formation of the Irish Free State in 1921 form the focus of this article. A longstanding interpretation of these negotiations has the British finessing the Irish by playing on the weaknesses of character of the Irish delegation. This interpretation is both flawed and influential. On one level, the article questions its historical accuracy and proposes an alternative. On another level, the article seeks to account …
Philosophic history and common culture in Gellner's theory of nationalism
Ernest Gellner's work on nationalism is situated in a larger social metaphysic and philosophical anthropology. This paper investigates some of these overarching intellectual commitments and their implications for his arguments about nationalism. Two main issues are examined. Does the method of ‘philosophic history’ provide any philosophical or methodological support for his treatment of nationalism? What are the implications of the common culture…
Gellner redux
The work of Ernest Gellner continues to be an influential part of nationalism studies. A recent appraisal has raised questions about the argument that Gellner offered in his central text on nationalism, Nations and Nationalism. This article takes up other issues in Gellner's work on nationalism. The article examines Gellner's influential definition of nationalism and the interpretation that he placed on that definition, as well as his treatment o…
Nationalism chez G ellner
The central distinguishing feature of E rnest G ellner's most important treatment of nationalism is the proposition that nationalism is necessary for industrial society. Relatively little attention has been paid to the philosophical dimension of this proposition. The question of necessity in social explanation, however, is a complicated philosophical problem and must be dealt with directly if this proposition is to be endorsed. I argue that G ell…
Explanations without causes and causes without reasons
Action is a central category in the social sciences. It is also commonplace to assume that the social world has a causal structure. Yet standard ways of specifying causal relations in social science lack explanatory force when the subject matter is intentional action. The present article considers this problem. The metaphysics of action are distinguished from the metaphysics of intentional action, and it is argued that the former forces an implau…
The Political Dynamics of Secession and Institutional Accommodation
Although not at the core of the history of ideas, federalism has a distinguished pedigree in political theory. This paper does not turn directly to federalism, however, and to the question of whether its institutional arrangements can be fine-tuned so as to reconcile territorial integrity and cultural heterogeneity. I propose instead a focus on the political dynamics of secession. This focus reveals the sensitivity of institutional accommodation …
Sequence and strategy in the secession of the American South
The political economy of tariffs in late nineteenth-century Europe: Reconsidering Republican France
La théorie du choix rationnel et ses critiques
La théorie du choix rationnel et ses critiques. Un article de la revue Sociologie et sociétés (La théorie du choix rationnel contre les sciences sociales ? Bilan des débats contemporains) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit
The Future of Quebec
SchSpflin (1995, 2000) has recently argued that the demands of substate nations in the West have been comparatively easy to satisfy. This claim is pari of a larger story about Western exceptionalism written primarily by historical sociologists. Much, but certainly not all of this work, is about the formation and consolidation of territorial states in the West the states of the classic 'Westphalian system'. Since 1945, and in particular since the …
The long nineteenth century in Europe
Histories of European international politics are punctuated by turning points. Typically, these watersheds have been connected to major wars. What do such histories have to tell us about nineteenth century Europe? What, if anything, is left out in the telling? My purposes in posing these questions are, first, to suggest that these histories focus too narrowly on war and, second, to propose an alternative perspective on modern European politics
Secession, states and international society
This article traces the evolution of the political meaning of secession from an action taken by a state within a compact or union, to an action available to a nation within a state. It is argued that this evolution, often forgotten in the customary attention given to national self-determination in international law and international relations theory, is associated not only with the modern emergence of nations and of states, but also with the emer…
Republics, Nations and Transitions to Modernity
There is virtually no treatment of republican political cleavages or political culture in the literature on European political development. This article fills part of this gap by examining the consequences of republican political culture for the history of nations and nationalism. I argue that the republican question was a central political cleavage in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but that it has been largely overlooked…
Economic Integration and the Politics of Independence
Are nationalism and international economic integration irreconcilable? This paper explores the theoretical connections between these two phenomena and develops a framework to assess the implications of international economic integration for nationalist movements in the developed West. We focus upon the structural context of nationalism in democratic societies, emphasising the impact of changes in the international political economy and the influe…
Notions of nationalism
In recent years, following the end of the cold war and the relative simplicities of the bipolar confrontation, nationalism has re-emerged as a dominant force and ideology in our world. Everywhere, peoples who had been confined within the borders of countries with which they did not identify, and whose regimes they intensely disliked, have been seeking self-determination and democracy. Notions of Nationalism, as the title implies, is an open-minde…
The foundations of Habermas's universal pragmatics
The Politics of Nationalism in Quebec
The central argument of this article is straightforward. (1) The contemporary Quebec nationalist movement has moved through phases of mobilization, demobilization, and remobilization. (2) Interpretations of Quebec nationalism do not successfully explain all three phases. (3) A new model of mobilization can provide a more satisfactory account. The goal is to construct a model that is useful for all three phases and that can say something about nat…
The Catholic Church and the Breton Language in the Third Republic
A Rational Choice Approach to Political Regionalism
Regionalist movements in peripheries have more limited goals than independence movements. Movements of the first kind typically stop short of outright independence and support instead some kind of decentralization of territorial power. Individuals who support independence should have transitive and monotonic preferences.' They prefer independence to decentralization to the status quo. Regionalist preferences are nonmonotonic. They prefer decentra…
The politics of language: Republican values and Breton identity
Among other things, the revolutionary period in France is notorious for two practices: the development of a civil religion and a project of linguistic standardization. The substitution of republican for religious symbols, the creation of public space for republican worship, the hostility towards intermediary bodies, all of this sought to ground a more direct relationship between the citizen and the republic. At the same time, the new order sought…
Lords, states and peasant revolts
Ethnic Nationalism and Collective Choice Theory
This article assesses how different kinds of divisions of labor constrain and enable ethnic collective action. The argument begins from the issue of the completeness of the group's division of labor and pursues the contradiction between Hechter's and Rogowski's position on the importance of the skill distribution among cultural group members. The article demonstrates that each of these positions draws on a different theory of international trade.…
The Politics of Nationalism in Quebec
The central argument of this article is straightforward. (1) The contemporary Quebec nationalist movement has moved through phases of mobilization, demobilization, and remobilization. (2) Interpretations of Quebec nationalism do not successfully explain all three phases. (3) A new model of mobilization can provide a more satisfactory account. The goal is to construct a model that is useful for all three phases and that can say something about nat…
Economic Integration and the Politics of Independence
Are nationalism and international economic integration irreconcilable? This paper explores the theoretical connections between these two phenomena and develops a framework to assess the implications of international economic integration for nationalist movements in the developed West. We focus upon the structural context of nationalism in democratic societies, emphasising the impact of changes in the international political economy and the influe…
Cultural and instrumental approaches to ethnic nationalism
This article identifies a set of assumptions that underlie culturalist approaches to ethnic nationalism and it assesses these assumptions from a particular instrumentalist point of view - collective-choice theory. It is argued that cultural approaches are structuralist, leaving little room for intentional explanations and, when agent-centred explanations are used, they are typically embedded within a moral economic theory of groups. In contrast, …
A Rational Choice Approach to Political Regionalism
Regionalist movements in peripheries have more limited goals than independence movements. Movements of the first kind typically stop short of outright independence and support instead some kind of decentralization of territorial power. Individuals who support independence should have transitive and monotonic preferences.' They prefer independence to decentralization to the status quo. Regionalist preferences are nonmonotonic. They prefer decentra…
Ethnic Nationalism and Collective Choice Theory
This article assesses how different kinds of divisions of labor constrain and enable ethnic collective action. The argument begins from the issue of the completeness of the group's division of labor and pursues the contradiction between Hechter's and Rogowski's position on the importance of the skill distribution among cultural group members. The article demonstrates that each of these positions draws on a different theory of international trade.…
Forms of Cultural Mobilization in Quebec and Brittany, 1870-1914
This paper presents case studies of cultural mobilization' in Quebec and Brittany at the end of the nineteenth century. Both regions have significant contemporary ethnic nationalist movements and in both the period from 1870 to 1914 provides an important baseline for the analysis of the historical roots of these current movements. Both case studies challenge assumptions and analytical frameworks that are commonly used in the literature of ethnic …
Nationalism chez G ellner
The central distinguishing feature of E rnest G ellner's most important treatment of nationalism is the proposition that nationalism is necessary for industrial society. Relatively little attention has been paid to the philosophical dimension of this proposition. The question of necessity in social explanation, however, is a complicated philosophical problem and must be dealt with directly if this proposition is to be endorsed. I argue that G ell…
Republics, Nations and Transitions to Modernity
There is virtually no treatment of republican political cleavages or political culture in the literature on European political development. This article fills part of this gap by examining the consequences of republican political culture for the history of nations and nationalism. I argue that the republican question was a central political cleavage in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but that it has been largely overlooked…
Gellner redux
The work of Ernest Gellner continues to be an influential part of nationalism studies. A recent appraisal has raised questions about the argument that Gellner offered in his central text on nationalism, Nations and Nationalism. This article takes up other issues in Gellner's work on nationalism. The article examines Gellner's influential definition of nationalism and the interpretation that he placed on that definition, as well as his treatment o…
The Political Dynamics of Secession and Institutional Accommodation
Although not at the core of the history of ideas, federalism has a distinguished pedigree in political theory. This paper does not turn directly to federalism, however, and to the question of whether its institutional arrangements can be fine-tuned so as to reconcile territorial integrity and cultural heterogeneity. I propose instead a focus on the political dynamics of secession. This focus reveals the sensitivity of institutional accommodation …
The political economy of tariffs in late nineteenth-century Europe: Reconsidering Republican France
Peasant Autonomy, Peasant Solidarity and Peasant Revolts
I have argued two points. Firstly, Skocpol has confused peasant autonomy and peasantstate alliances. The relationship between autonomy and revolt is spurious. Secondly, peasant solidarity is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of peasant revolt. It is not necessary because revolt concentrated in a specific niche in a peasant community cannot be attributed to peasant solidarity. Nor is solidarity sufficient, because it has effects only in c…
Philosophic history and common culture in Gellner's theory of nationalism
Ernest Gellner's work on nationalism is situated in a larger social metaphysic and philosophical anthropology. This paper investigates some of these overarching intellectual commitments and their implications for his arguments about nationalism. Two main issues are examined. Does the method of ‘philosophic history’ provide any philosophical or methodological support for his treatment of nationalism? What are the implications of the common culture…
Sequence and strategy in the secession of the American South
Secession, states and international society
This article traces the evolution of the political meaning of secession from an action taken by a state within a compact or union, to an action available to a nation within a state. It is argued that this evolution, often forgotten in the customary attention given to national self-determination in international law and international relations theory, is associated not only with the modern emergence of nations and of states, but also with the emer…
Durkheim and realism
This article examines Durkheim's relationship to realism. I argue that there is enough prima facie evidence of realist commitments in his work that our task should be to consider what kind of realist Durkheim was. I discuss, first of all, Durkheim's epistemics and follow that analysis with a discussion of metaphysical realism in his texts. The first part of the paper covers a wide range of his work; the second part focuses primarily on The Elemen…
Endogeneity and qualitative political analysis: Debates about method or debates about ontology
Qualitative political analysis has made substantial methodological progress in the last 25 years. This article examines the contributions to this progress made by the work of three American social scientists (King, Keohane, and Verba, 2021 [1994], hereafter KKV) and the responses that their work provoked. The article identifies a recurring ambiguity in this methodological literature. In the quantitative tradition to which KKV want to hold qualita…
Explanations without causes and causes without reasons
Action is a central category in the social sciences. It is also commonplace to assume that the social world has a causal structure. Yet standard ways of specifying causal relations in social science lack explanatory force when the subject matter is intentional action. The present article considers this problem. The metaphysics of action are distinguished from the metaphysics of intentional action, and it is argued that the former forces an implau…
La théorie du choix rationnel et ses critiques
La théorie du choix rationnel et ses critiques. Un article de la revue Sociologie et sociétés (La théorie du choix rationnel contre les sciences sociales ? Bilan des débats contemporains) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit
The Future of Quebec
SchSpflin (1995, 2000) has recently argued that the demands of substate nations in the West have been comparatively easy to satisfy. This claim is pari of a larger story about Western exceptionalism written primarily by historical sociologists. Much, but certainly not all of this work, is about the formation and consolidation of territorial states in the West the states of the classic 'Westphalian system'. Since 1945, and in particular since the …
The foundations of Habermas's universal pragmatics
Lords, states and peasant revolts
Exchange relations between lords and peasants
The purposes of this article are, first, to present a theoretical discussion of peasant revolts that develops an exchange model of relations between lords and peasants and second, to use this discussion as a framework for a review of some of the work on peasant activity in eighteenth-century France. The argument, therefore, begins from social exchange; it does not privilege structures at the theoretical origin. Any analysis should specify three f…
Forms of Cultural Mobilization in Quebec and Brittany, 1870-1914
This paper presents case studies of cultural mobilization' in Quebec and Brittany at the end of the nineteenth century. Both regions have significant contemporary ethnic nationalist movements and in both the period from 1870 to 1914 provides an important baseline for the analysis of the historical roots of these current movements. Both case studies challenge assumptions and analytical frameworks that are commonly used in the literature of ethnic …
Exchange relations between lords and peasants
The purposes of this article are, first, to present a theoretical discussion of peasant revolts that develops an exchange model of relations between lords and peasants and second, to use this discussion as a framework for a review of some of the work on peasant activity in eighteenth-century France. The argument, therefore, begins from social exchange; it does not privilege structures at the theoretical origin. Any analysis should specify three f…
Peasant Autonomy, Peasant Solidarity and Peasant Revolts
I have argued two points. Firstly, Skocpol has confused peasant autonomy and peasantstate alliances. The relationship between autonomy and revolt is spurious. Secondly, peasant solidarity is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of peasant revolt. It is not necessary because revolt concentrated in a specific niche in a peasant community cannot be attributed to peasant solidarity. Nor is solidarity sufficient, because it has effects only in c…
Ethnic Nationalism and Collective Choice Theory
This article assesses how different kinds of divisions of labor constrain and enable ethnic collective action. The argument begins from the issue of the completeness of the group's division of labor and pursues the contradiction between Hechter's and Rogowski's position on the importance of the skill distribution among cultural group members. The article demonstrates that each of these positions draws on a different theory of international trade.…
Cultural and instrumental approaches to ethnic nationalism
This article identifies a set of assumptions that underlie culturalist approaches to ethnic nationalism and it assesses these assumptions from a particular instrumentalist point of view - collective-choice theory. It is argued that cultural approaches are structuralist, leaving little room for intentional explanations and, when agent-centred explanations are used, they are typically embedded within a moral economic theory of groups. In contrast, …
The politics of language: Republican values and Breton identity
Among other things, the revolutionary period in France is notorious for two practices: the development of a civil religion and a project of linguistic standardization. The substitution of republican for religious symbols, the creation of public space for republican worship, the hostility towards intermediary bodies, all of this sought to ground a more direct relationship between the citizen and the republic. At the same time, the new order sought…
Lords, states and peasant revolts
The Catholic Church and the Breton Language in the Third Republic
A Rational Choice Approach to Political Regionalism
Regionalist movements in peripheries have more limited goals than independence movements. Movements of the first kind typically stop short of outright independence and support instead some kind of decentralization of territorial power. Individuals who support independence should have transitive and monotonic preferences.' They prefer independence to decentralization to the status quo. Regionalist preferences are nonmonotonic. They prefer decentra…
The Politics of Nationalism in Quebec
The central argument of this article is straightforward. (1) The contemporary Quebec nationalist movement has moved through phases of mobilization, demobilization, and remobilization. (2) Interpretations of Quebec nationalism do not successfully explain all three phases. (3) A new model of mobilization can provide a more satisfactory account. The goal is to construct a model that is useful for all three phases and that can say something about nat…
The foundations of Habermas's universal pragmatics
Notions of nationalism
In recent years, following the end of the cold war and the relative simplicities of the bipolar confrontation, nationalism has re-emerged as a dominant force and ideology in our world. Everywhere, peoples who had been confined within the borders of countries with which they did not identify, and whose regimes they intensely disliked, have been seeking self-determination and democracy. Notions of Nationalism, as the title implies, is an open-minde…
Economic Integration and the Politics of Independence
Are nationalism and international economic integration irreconcilable? This paper explores the theoretical connections between these two phenomena and develops a framework to assess the implications of international economic integration for nationalist movements in the developed West. We focus upon the structural context of nationalism in democratic societies, emphasising the impact of changes in the international political economy and the influe…
Secession, states and international society
This article traces the evolution of the political meaning of secession from an action taken by a state within a compact or union, to an action available to a nation within a state. It is argued that this evolution, often forgotten in the customary attention given to national self-determination in international law and international relations theory, is associated not only with the modern emergence of nations and of states, but also with the emer…
Republics, Nations and Transitions to Modernity
There is virtually no treatment of republican political cleavages or political culture in the literature on European political development. This article fills part of this gap by examining the consequences of republican political culture for the history of nations and nationalism. I argue that the republican question was a central political cleavage in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but that it has been largely overlooked…
The Future of Quebec
SchSpflin (1995, 2000) has recently argued that the demands of substate nations in the West have been comparatively easy to satisfy. This claim is pari of a larger story about Western exceptionalism written primarily by historical sociologists. Much, but certainly not all of this work, is about the formation and consolidation of territorial states in the West the states of the classic 'Westphalian system'. Since 1945, and in particular since the …
The long nineteenth century in Europe
Histories of European international politics are punctuated by turning points. Typically, these watersheds have been connected to major wars. What do such histories have to tell us about nineteenth century Europe? What, if anything, is left out in the telling? My purposes in posing these questions are, first, to suggest that these histories focus too narrowly on war and, second, to propose an alternative perspective on modern European politics
The political economy of tariffs in late nineteenth-century Europe: Reconsidering Republican France
La théorie du choix rationnel et ses critiques
La théorie du choix rationnel et ses critiques. Un article de la revue Sociologie et sociétés (La théorie du choix rationnel contre les sciences sociales ? Bilan des débats contemporains) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit
Sequence and strategy in the secession of the American South
The Political Dynamics of Secession and Institutional Accommodation
Although not at the core of the history of ideas, federalism has a distinguished pedigree in political theory. This paper does not turn directly to federalism, however, and to the question of whether its institutional arrangements can be fine-tuned so as to reconcile territorial integrity and cultural heterogeneity. I propose instead a focus on the political dynamics of secession. This focus reveals the sensitivity of institutional accommodation …
Explanations without causes and causes without reasons
Action is a central category in the social sciences. It is also commonplace to assume that the social world has a causal structure. Yet standard ways of specifying causal relations in social science lack explanatory force when the subject matter is intentional action. The present article considers this problem. The metaphysics of action are distinguished from the metaphysics of intentional action, and it is argued that the former forces an implau…
Nationalism chez G ellner
The central distinguishing feature of E rnest G ellner's most important treatment of nationalism is the proposition that nationalism is necessary for industrial society. Relatively little attention has been paid to the philosophical dimension of this proposition. The question of necessity in social explanation, however, is a complicated philosophical problem and must be dealt with directly if this proposition is to be endorsed. I argue that G ell…
Gellner redux
The work of Ernest Gellner continues to be an influential part of nationalism studies. A recent appraisal has raised questions about the argument that Gellner offered in his central text on nationalism, Nations and Nationalism. This article takes up other issues in Gellner's work on nationalism. The article examines Gellner's influential definition of nationalism and the interpretation that he placed on that definition, as well as his treatment o…
Philosophic history and common culture in Gellner's theory of nationalism
Ernest Gellner's work on nationalism is situated in a larger social metaphysic and philosophical anthropology. This paper investigates some of these overarching intellectual commitments and their implications for his arguments about nationalism. Two main issues are examined. Does the method of ‘philosophic history’ provide any philosophical or methodological support for his treatment of nationalism? What are the implications of the common culture…
Sociology (25 works) · Political science (24 works) · Law (22 works) · Politics (19 works) · Law (16 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Political economy (12 works) · Nationalism (11 works) · Economics (8 works)