Nationalism, internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and other misunderstandings

The national process of emancipation that began in Catalonia in 2012 is an excellent opportunity to show how often is presented under the generic label of "nationalisms" masks historical, social, political, economic, and even contradictory or antagonistic dynamics. Speaking without nuances of "nationalism" implies reducing to the unit processes that can not be understood apart from the way in which social segments with specific interests and objectives use their idea of homeland as a source of moral legitimacy and a passionate resource for their mobilizations. In these contexts, both nationalist ideologies and those presumed to be anti-nationalist -internationalism and cosmopolitanism- offer ambivalence and even interchangeability when invoked. By the way, a good opportunity, that of relations with the "proces", to contemplate the limitations of the analytical distancing of anthropologists when deciding on the nationalist movements that take place within their own country.