...phenomena, constructed essentially from above, but which cannot be understood unless also analyzed from below, that is in terms of the assumptions, hopes,...ordinary people, which are not necessarily national and still less nationalist." In the twentieth century, both historians and their readers have frequently...

...Hobsbawm has argued, best understood as part of an analysis done only from "above", but needs also to be "analysed from below, that is in terms of the assumptions,...needs, longings and interests of ordinary people" (1992: 10). 8 We need to consider both the elite and common, the urban and rural (cf. Robertson 1991),...

...essentially from above' but he also emphasizes that they 'cannot be understood unless also analyzed from below, that is, in terms of the assumptions,...needs, longings and interests of ordinary people' (1990: 10). There is something of a consensus that nationalism only comes about under conditions of...

...wrote Eric Hobsbawm, are "dual phenomena": they are "constructed essentially from above," yet they "cannot be understood unless also analysed from below,...needs, longings and interests of ordinary people." The disjuncture between heated nationalist rhetoric and muted popular response in postcommunist Cluj...

...Hobsbawm's claim, however, that phenomena like national identity 'cannot be understood unless analyzed also from below, that is in terms of the assumptions, hopes,...needs, longings and interests of ordinary people' (Hobsbawm 1992:10), our main aim was to explore how the East German people felt and feel, ie those...