The Image of the Past and Economic Backwardness

Many underdeveloped countries have been increasingly demonstrating a strong sentiment of nationalism. This sentiment has found expression in, among other ways, glorification of past traditions and idealization of qualities in the native culture. Such romanticism, if it produces a solidarity and purposeful singlemindedness, can prove expedient for mobilizing social forces necessary to lead to economic change. However, in the process of buttressing national pride and consciousness and in programming for economic development, traditional values and some institutions of the predevelopment phase will be useful only if they are retained in general form. Thus, the Meiji revolution of Japan was successful in romanticizing some of the spirit of old Japan (Bushido) but, at the same time, it adopted the concrete substance of western institutions, which prepared the transformation of the Japanese economy into a developing system. But, if national romanticism is such that it leads to sterile and slavish imitation of anachronistic forms, national energy will be diverted to nativistic frivolity and waste. Such romantic attachment does not lead to the establishment of the social milieu necessary to developing and expanding institutions which will create the conditions for the take-off phase of the economy

Aesthetics · Backwardness · Commodity · Economic growth · Economic nationalism · Economics · Environmental ethics · Market economy · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Romanticism · Sociology · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy

• Debate on John Hutchinson'sNations as Zones of Conflict

  Open Access•Gerard Delanty, J Hutchinson et al.•Nations and Nationalism•2008

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• The myth of the 'modern nation' and the myths of nations

  Anthony D Smith•Ethnic and Racial Studies•1988

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