378 Am Soc (2010) 41:375–381 make claims for an independent state or autonomous polity, and why such claims often come in bunches. They also do a good job explaining why increasingly resource-hungry central rulers seek to engage those over whom they rule as citizens rather than as mere subjects, and to elicit their loyalty, identification and commitment, and not simply their compliance. But changing incentives don’t explain why the claims-making of threatened elites takes the form of speaking in the name of a “nation,” or why resource-hungry rulers themselves begin to use the language of nationhood to frame their claims on resources and loyalties. Nor do they explain why such claims-making elicited broad popular support (when it did elicit broad popular support, which was not always the case). Why did central rulers and those threatened by increasingly direct rule claim to speak and act in the name of a nation? Why did they adopt the political and cultural language of nationhood, and associated rituals and practices, rather than some other political and cultural language? Why did they cultivate this particular kind of imagined community? Chuck’s answer was that this language and the associated rituals and practices were useful both to centralizing rulers and to those who were resisting their initiatives (1996: 303–4). But why were they useful? Why did they help rulers to implement direct rule and extract more resources, and why did they help elites who were threatened by such increasingly direct rule and intensified extractive efforts to mobilize resistance against these changes? Why were the language of nationhood and the associated rituals and practices more effective for these purposes than other languages, rituals, and practices? Chuck’s account here is rather sketchy, but I think it goes something like this. Resource-hungry rulers, as well as those resisting projects of direct rule, benefit from subjects or followers who are not only compliant but committed; and the language of nationhood—along with associated rituals and an array of standardizing, homoge- nizing practices—helps produce such commitment. But what is it about the rhetoric and rituals of nationhood that is especially apt to produce such commitment? The bellicist argument is a demand-side argument, not a supply-side argument. It explains the increased demand for commitment (as distinguished from mere compliance) at a particular historical juncture; but it doesn’t explain, as it were, the supply of commitment. It doesn’t explain how commitment was generated, or why specifically nationalist languages, imaginings, rituals, and practices were more effective than others in producing such commitment. Identification with and commitment to a political community have been generated in various ways in differing historical contexts; the bellicist argument can’t explain why nationalism is a particularly effective mode of political socialization. But there is a deeper problem with Chuck’s emphasis on the usefulness of the rhetoric and rituals of nationhood in particular political contexts. Chuck helpfully points to the political work done by particular forms of language in particular circumstances. But his emphasis on the instrumental usefulness of nationalist rhetoric and rituals is also somewhat reductionist. I use this loaded term somewhat reluctantly. Reductionism has a bad name, but I don’t think it’s necessarily such a bad thing. One could argue that Chuck was a powerful theorist precisely because he was in some sense a reductionist. Theoretical power depends on parsimony; and “parsimonious” is arguably just a non-pejorative word for “reductionist.”