He concentrates on the psychological effects that continued, created and transforming symbols and rituals of nations and nation states have had on communities and how they allow for the continued importance of nationalism in their minds.
In "Nations and Nationalism" Gellner attempts to answer the question of why nationalism is so pervasive in the modern world. He believed that the economies of industrialized states depend upon a homogenizing high culture, mass literacy and an educational system controlled by the state. In a sense, a Marxist ideology can be found in such theories, exemplified by Nairn, who believes that nationalism is the product of the uneven development of regions within a world capitalist economy. "As capitalism spread and smashed the ancient social formations surrounding it, they always tended to fall apart along the fault-lines contained inside them. It is a matter of elementary truth that these lines were nearly always ones of nationality."# Gellner places much importance on politics in relation to nationalism, asserting that "nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent."# In terms of citizenship, Gellner believes that citizenship rights were launched by the French Revolution, and that the unpleasant and degrading conditions of the proletariat brought about by the Industrial Revolution provided both opportunity and a motive for a growth of political consciousness, exemplified by the formation of organizations such as trade unions. Gellner emphasises education as an extremely important feature of modern nationalism. It was industrialism, he argues in "Nations and Nationalism", and the importance of an advanced division of labour which prompted a different education system which provided people with the basic tools for employment; language and literacy. In his view, this produced a "standard culture" which needed a centralized state to sustain it.
