Ethnic attachments are inherited rather than chosen, and those who exercise an ethnic form of nationalism are generally considered to be those who have been adversely affected by the political development of alternative civic societies elsewhere - the Jews in pre-war Europe, the Kurds in northern Iraq/eastern Turkey or the Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo to name but three examples
Subject to the dominance of, and perceiving an inferiority to, such other territorially demarcated nation states, these individuals, feeling the need to adopt statehood in order to survive and progress, unite into groups, with the intention of achieving political recognition in the form of their own nation states. Without institutions or other unifying tools (for example, class) which may unite these people, the groups often seek to identify their own unique characteristics, which set them apart from others in order to assert their sovereignty. Gellner states that ethnic nationalism:.
" was active on behalf of a high culture not as yet properly crystallised, a mere aspirant or in-the-making high culture.".
Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983. p100.
Requiring a short cut towards a high culture necessary for modern development, these groups, in the absence of the vital foundations and institutions in place in society, are forced to create one from what they have - language, culture, skin colour, religion, etc., thus bringing about the belief that ethnic/blood consciousness, rather than civic/civil consciousness is dominant in the emerging political culture. The difference between civic and ethnic nationalism is therefore said by many theorists to lie in the beginnings of the emerging of the community, relative to the actual development of a political unit or, put more simply, civic nationalism arises only after the nation state has been established, whereas ethnic nationalism usually manifests itself with the very intention of establishing such a state.
