Print and National Identity

Print and National Identity


The rise of industrial capitalism required intensive specialization in labor ultimately yielding the creation of a nation-state as specialized labor called for a complex and contextualized system of communication and educational independence further unifying peoples.
One historian writes that laborers “must be able to communicate by means of written, impersonal, context-free, to-whom-it-may concern type messages. Hence these communications must be in the same shared and standardized linguistic medium and script” (Gellner, 35). The structure of industrial capitalism allowed intricate, contextualized, yet open communication between its members in order to further unify the group and promote understanding of the many specializations of industrialized labor.
The role of education in pre-industrial society, according to Gellner, involved “the scholastic and ritual complexity mastered by the schoolmen of a developed agrarian society is often such as to strain the very limits of the human mind” (Gellner 26). Education both general and specialized was seen as critical to the development of pre-industrial skilled laborers. Training and education was characteristically highly specialized while industrialized training involved a more generic approach. Consequently, the role of education was to harbor independence (a potentially firm precursor to nationalism) and promote exo-education in years to come.
History has proved that language is one of the key components to unifying people. Both verbal and nonverbal communication are critical to establishing a common identity between peoples. The history of nationalism ultimately includes this concept of language as the kick start to visible potentially revolutionary unification. To a very strong extent, print collaboratively contributed to the development of national identities as it established a way for communication to become unified.
Referencing the collaborative efforts of print, it is important to consider how...

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