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Ethnic boxes: the unintended consequences of Habsburg bureaucratic classification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Rok Stergar Open the ORCID record for Rok Stergar [Opens in a new window]  and
Tamara Scheer Open the ORCID record for Tamara Scheer [Opens in a new window]
Rok Stergar*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Tamara Scheer
Affiliation:
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Historical Social Science, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Institute for East European History, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
*
*Corresponding author. Email: rok.stergar@ff.uni-lj.si
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Abstract

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The classificatory efforts that accompanied the modernization of the Habsburg state inadvertently helped establish, promote, and perpetuate national categories of identification, often contrary to the intentions of the Habsburg bureaucracy. The state did not create nations, but its classification of languages made available some ethnolinguistic identity categories that nationalists used to make political claims. The institutionalization of these categories also made them more relevant, especially as nationalist movements simultaneously worked toward the same goal. Yet identification with a nation did not follow an algorithmic logic, in the beginning of the twentieth century, sometimes earlier, various nationalisms could undoubtedly mobilize large numbers of people in Austria-Hungary, but people still had agency and nationness remained contingent and situational.

Keywords

nationalismHabsburg EmpirebureaucracyclassificationCentral Europe
Type
Research Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 46 , Issue 4: Special Section: Classification , July 2018 , pp. 575 - 591
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 The Authors

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