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cases, theorists situate similar mechanisms at the center of their explanatory projects—
modernization for example—but, when they turn to the “casual story” of their particular
case, they fall short of the certainties of law-like explanations. For example, some argue
that industrialization required the manufacturing of a new workforce, characterized by
interchangeable individuals, operating with similar views of the world and shared taken-
for-granted understandings of social reality (Gellner 1983). This requirement produced a
carefully engineered system of public education, designed to construct a shared
consciousness and a sense of connectedness and this laid the foundation for the
construction of the nation. Others, hanging their explanatory projects on a similar
mechanism, tell a different story, that focuses on the dilemma of less economically
advanced societies, and the need for societies to reconstitute themselves to compete
economically with advanced neighbors in order to preserve their political and economic
autonomy (Nairn 1977). Employing the flexible analytical perspective permitted by the
social mechanisms approach, we can situate these different projects under a single
umbrella, and gain an appreciation that economic modernization may be a central variable
in the explanation of nationalism, even if its influence takes different forms in different
cases.
It also seems like the Cuban case is an ideal case to test the usefulness of social
mechanisms approaches. There, the mechanisms that produced pro-nationalist sentiments
among planters elsewhere in the Spanish colonial empire–fear of restless populations of
color and a desire to seize control over their economic lives–produced instead a tendency
among the Cuban landed class to cling to Spain. Why did these mechanisms trigger a
different outcome in Cuba? The difference was rooted in history, and the belief among
Convention