Primordialism

Primordialism or perennialism is the argument which contends that nations are ancient, natural phenomena.

Primordialism can be traced philosophically to the ideas of German Romanticism, particularly in the works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Johann Gottfried Herder. For Herder, the nation was synonymous with language group. In Herder's thinking, language was synonymous with thought, and as each language was learnt in community, then each community must think differently. This also suggests that the community would hold a fixed nature over time.

Primordialism encountered enormous criticism after the Second World War, with many scholars of nationalism coming to treat the nation as a community constructed by the technologies and politics of modernity. (Modernism)

Primordialism, in relation to ethnicity, argues that “ethnic groups and nationalities exist because there are traditions of belief and action towards primordial objects such as biological factors and especially territorial location”.

This argument relies on a concept of kinship, where members of an ethnic group feel they share characteristics, origins or sometimes even a blood relationship. Seen through the Igbos of Nigeria, following what they felt was their origin as descendants of the Jews. “Primordialism assumes ethnic identity as fixed, once it is constructed”.

The Rwandan Genocide in 1994 witnessed the murder of approximately 800,000 Rwandans in the span of three months. This violence, as also experienced in the Nigerian Civil War in 1967, was arguably due to ethnicity and the rivalries between ethnic groups. The dominant Hutu ethnic group in Rwanda felt they must kill their ethnic neighbours the Tutsi, due to established differences in ethnic identities which set them apart. As historian Sandra Joireman argues, ‘this type of explanation of the Rwanda genocide and its horrific violence, with its emphasis on the causes being due to the difference in Kinship and beliefs of the two ethnic groups, is a primordialist view.

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