Anthony D. Smith

Anthony D. Smith
Born	(1939-09-23)23 September 1939 London, England
Died	19 July 2016(2016-07-19) (aged 76) London, England
Education	Oxford University (BA) London School of Economics (MSc, DPhil)
Occupation	Template:Sociologist
Employer	London School of Economics
Title	Professor Emeritus

Anthony David Stephen Smith (23 September 1939 – 19 July 2016) was a British historical sociologist who, at the time of his death, was Professor Emeritus of Nationalism and Ethnicity at the London School of Economics. He is considered one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of nationalism studies.

Smith took his first degree in classics and philosophy at Oxford University and his master's degree and doctorate in sociology at the London School of Economics. He was the first president of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism.

Smith's best-known contributions to the field are the distinction between 'civic' and 'ethnic' types of nations and nationalism, and the idea that all nations have dominant 'ethnic cores'. While Smith agrees with other authors that nationalism is a modern phenomenon, he insists that nations have premodern origins.

He is a former student of the philosopher and anthropologist Ernest Gellner, but he did not share his view of nationalism in the long run. He created an approach of nationalism he called ethnosymbolism, which is a synthesis of modernist and traditional views on the subject.

Smith argues that nationalism draws on the pre-existing history of the "group", an attempt to fashion this history into a sense of common identity and shared history. That is not to say that this history should be academically valid or cogent, but Smith asserts that many nationalisms are based on historically flawed interpretations of past events and tend to mythologise small, inaccurate parts of their history. Moreover, Smith reasons that nationalistic interpretations of the past are frequently fabricated to justify modern political and ethnic positions.

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