Nation
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A nation is a large type of social organization where a collective identity, a national identity, has emerged from a combination of shared features across a given population, such as language, history, ethnicity, culture, territory or society. Some nations are constructed around ethnicity (see ethnic nationalism) while others are bound by political constitutions (see civic nationalism and multiculturalism).[1]
A nation is generally more overtly political than an
The consensus among scholars is that nations are
Etymology and terminology
The English word nation from Middle English c. 1300, nacioun "a race of people, large group of people with common ancestry and language," from Old French nacion "birth (naissance), rank; descendants, relatives; country, homeland" (12c.) and directly from Latin nationem (nominative natio (nātĭō), supine of verb nascar « to birth » (supine : natum)) "birth, origin; breed, stock, kind, species; race of people, tribe," literally "that which has been born," from natus, past participle of nasci "be born" (Old Latin gnasci), from PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups.[8]
In Latin, natio represents the children of the same birth and also a human group of same origin.[9] By Cicero, natio is used for "people".[10]
Black's Law Dictionary defines a nation as follows:
nation, n. (14c) 1. A large group of people having a common origin, language, tradition, and usage constitutes a political entity. • When a nation is coincident with a state, the term nation-state is often used....
...
2. A community of people inhabiting a defined territory and organized under an independent government; a sovereign political state....[2]
The word "nation" is sometimes used as synonym for:
- State (polity) or sovereign state: a government that controls a specific territory, which may or may not be associated with any particular ethnic group
- Country: a geographic territory, which may or may not have an affiliation with a government or ethnic group
- Ethnic groupin older texts due to its original meaning and etymology
Thus the phrase "nations of the world" could be referring to the top-level governments (as in the name for the United Nations), various large geographical territories, or various large ethnic groups of the planet.
Depending on the meaning of "nation" used, the term "
Medieval nations
The existence of Medieval nations
The broad consensus amongst scholars of nationalism is that nations are a recent phenomenon.[11] However, some historians argue their existence can be traced to the medieval period.
Susan Reynolds has argued that many European medieval kingdoms were nations in the modern sense, except that political participation in nationalism was available only to a limited prosperous and literate class,[12] while Adrian Hastings claims England's Anglo-Saxon kings mobilized mass nationalism in their struggle to repel Norse invasions. He argues that Alfred the Great, in particular, drew on biblical language in his law code and that during his reign selected books of the Bible were translated into Old English to inspire Englishmen to fight to turn back the Norse invaders.
Hastings argues for a strong renewal of English nationalism (following a hiatus after the
However, John Breuilly criticizes Hastings's assumption that continued usage of a term such as 'English' means continuity in its meaning.[14] Patrick J. Geary agrees, arguing names were adapted to different circumstances by different powers and could convince people of continuity, even if radical discontinuity was the lived reality.[15]
Azar Gat also argues
Criticisms
In contrast, Geary rejects the conflation of early medieval and contemporary group identities as a myth, arguing it is a mistake to conclude continuity based on the recurrence of names. He criticizes historians for failing to recognize the differences between earlier ways of perceiving group identities and more contemporary attitudes, stating they are "trapped in the very historical process we are attempting to study".[22]
Similarly, Sami Zubaida notes that many states and empires in history ruled over ethnically diverse populations, and "shared ethnicity between ruler and ruled did not always constitute grounds for favour or mutual support". He goes on to argue ethnicity was never the primary basis of identification for the members of these multinational empires.[23]
Paul Lawrence criticises Hastings's reading of Bede, observing that those writing so-called 'national' histories may have "been working with a rather different notion of 'the nation' to those writing history in the modern period". Lawrence goes on to argue that such documents do not demonstrate how ordinary people identified themselves, pointing out that, while they serve as texts in which an elite defines itself, "their significance in relation to what the majority thought and felt was likely to have been minor".[24]
Use of term nationes by medieval universities and other medieval institutions
A significant early use of the term nation, as natio, occurred at
In a similar way, the nationes were segregated by the Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem, who maintained at Rhodes the hostels from which they took their name "where foreigners eat and have their places of meeting, each nation apart from the others, and a Knight has charge of each one of these hostels, and provides for the necessities of the inmates according to their religion", as the Spanish traveller Pedro Tafur noted in 1436.[26]
Early modern nations
In his article, "The Mosaic Moment: An Early Modernist Critique of the Modernist Theory of Nationalism",
In her book Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Liah Greenfeld argued that nationalism was invented in England by 1600. According to Greenfeld, England was “the first nation in the world".[31][32]
Social science
There are three notable perspectives on how nations developed. Primordialism (perennialism), which reflects popular conceptions of nationalism but has largely fallen out of favour among academics,[33] proposes that there have always been nations and that nationalism is a natural phenomenon. Ethnosymbolism explains nationalism as a dynamic, evolving phenomenon and stresses the importance of symbols, myths and traditions in the development of nations and nationalism. Modernization theory, which has superseded primordialism as the dominant explanation of nationalism,[34] adopts a constructivist approach and proposes that nationalism emerged due to processes of modernization, such as industrialization, urbanization, and mass education, which made national consciousness possible.[6][35]
Proponents of modernization theory describe nations as "
Scholars in the 19th and early 20th century offered constructivist criticisms of primordial theories about nations.[40] A prominent lecture by Ernest Renan, "What is a Nation?", argues that a nation is "a daily referendum", and that nations are based as much on what the people jointly forget as on what they remember. Carl Darling Buck argued in a 1916 study, "Nationality is essentially subjective, an active sentiment of unity, within a fairly extensive group, a sentiment based upon real but diverse factors, political, geographical, physical, and social, any or all of which may be present in this or that case, but no one of which must be present in all cases."[40]
In the late 20th century, many social scientists[
Debate about a potential future of nations
There is an ongoing debate about the future of nations − about whether this framework will persist as is and whether there are viable or developing alternatives.[43]
The theory of the
The theory was originally formulated in a 1992 lecture[44] at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?",[45] in response to Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
Huntington began his thinking by surveying the diverse theories about the nature of global politics in the post–Cold War period. Some theorists and writers argued that human rights, liberal democracy and capitalist free market economics had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post–Cold War world. Specifically, Francis Fukuyama, in The End of History and the Last Man, argued that the world had reached a Hegelian "end of history".
Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had reverted only to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural and religious lines.
Jan Zielonka of the University of Oxford states that "the future structure and exercise of political power will resemble the medieval model more than the Westphalian one" with the latter being about "concentration of power, sovereignty and clear-cut identity" and neo-medievalism meaning "overlapping authorities, divided sovereignty, multiple identities and governing institutions, and fuzzy borders".[43]
See also
- Citizenship
- City network
- Country
- Government
- Identity (social science)
- Imagined Communities
- Invented tradition
- Lists of people by nationality
- Meta-ethnicity
- Minzu (anthropology)
- Multinational state
- National emblem
- National god
- National memory
- Nationalism
- Nationality
- People
- Polity
- Qaum
- Race (human categorization)
- Separatism
- Irredentism
- Society
- Sovereign state
- Stateless nation
- Tribe
- Republic
- Republicanism
References
- ^ Eller 1997.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-314-61300-4.
- SAGE Publications. Archivedfrom the original on 6 October 2021. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
- ISBN 978-0-86091-546-1.
- ISBN 978-0-631-16169-1 – via Google Books.
- ^ .
- ^ Kohn, Hans (2018). Nationalism. Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 15 January 2022. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
- ^ "nation | Etymology of nation by etymonline". www.etymonline.com. Retrieved 24 January 2024.
- Le Petit Robert, édition 2002.
- ^ Dictionnaire Latin-Français, Gaffiot.
- S2CID 259646325.
a broad scholarly consensus that the nation is a recent and imagined identity dominates political science
- ^ Reynolds, Susan (1997). Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe 900–1300. Oxford.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Hastings, Adrian (1997). The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Özkirimli, Umut (2010). Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (2nd ed.). London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 78.
- ^ Özkirimli, Umut (2010). Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (2nd ed.). London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 77.
- .
- ISBN 978-1-85065-534-3 – via Google Books.
- ISBN 978-9989756078. Archivedfrom the original on 15 September 2020. Retrieved 11 February 2015.
- ISBN 9780719060953. Archived from the original on 15 January 2023. Retrieved 11 February 2015 – via Google Books.
- .
- ^ Azar Gat, Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2013, China, p. 93 Korea, p. 104 and Japan p., 105.
- ^ Özkirimli, Umut (2010). Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (2nd ed.). London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 77–78.
- ^ Özkirimli, Umut (2010). Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (2nd ed.). London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 77–78.
- ISBN 978-0-19-876820-3.
- ^ see: nation (university)
- ^ Pedro Tafur, Andanças e viajes Archived 29 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine.
- from the original on 4 December 2022. Retrieved 27 April 2023.
- ^ Appelbaum, Diana Muir (2013). "Biblical nationalism and the sixteenth-century states". National Identities. Vol. 15. p. 317.
- ^ Smith, Anthony D. (2003). Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity. Oxford University Press.
- ^ Smith, Anthony D. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford University Press.
- ^ Guilbert, Steven. The Making of English National Identity. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
- ^ Greenfeld, Liah (1992). Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Harvard University Press.
- (PDF) from the original on 28 September 2022. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
- S2CID 154796642.
- ISBN 978-0-7456-5128-6.
- ^ Anderson, Benedict (1983). Imagined Communities. London: Verso Books.
- SAGE Publications. Archivedfrom the original on 29 April 2020. Retrieved 2 November 2017.
- ^ Anderson, Benedict (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. London: Verso Books.
- ^ Hobsbawm, E.; Ranger, T. (1983). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ S2CID 146904598.
- ^ ISBN 2010166779.
- ISBN 978-0-674-13178-1
- ^ a b "End of nations: Is there an alternative to countries?". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 18 March 2017. Retrieved 10 May 2017.
- ^ "U.S. Trade Policy — Economics". AEI. 15 February 2007. Archived from the original on 29 June 2013. Retrieved 20 February 2013.
- ^ Official copy (free preview): "The Clash of Civilizations?". Foreign Affairs. Summer 1993. Archived from the original on 29 June 2007.
- ^ R. Koopmans and P. Statham; "Challenging the liberal nation-state? Postnationalism, multiculturalism, and the collective claims making of migrants and ethnic minorities in Britain and Germany"; American Journal of Sociology 105:652–96 (1999)
- ^ R.A. Hackenberg and R.R. Alvarez; "Close-ups of postnationalism: Reports from the US-Mexico borderlands"; Human Organization 60:97–104 (2001)
- ^ I. Bloemraad; "Who claims dual citizenship? The limits of postnationalism, the possibilities of transnationalism, and the persistence of traditional citizenship"; International Migration Review 38:389–426 (2004)
Sources
- Anderson, Benedict (1983). Imagined Communities. London: Verso Books.
- Gellner, Ernest (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Cambridge: Blackwell.
- SAGE Publications.
- James, Paul (2006). Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In — Volume 2 of Towards a Theory of Abstract Community. London: Sage Publications.
- Smith, Anthony (1986). The Ethnic Origins of Nations. London: Blackwell.
- Bhabha, Homi K. (1990). Nations and Narration. New York: Routledge.
- Eller, Jack David (1997). "Ethnicity, Culture, and "The Past"". .
- Mylonas, Harris; Tudor, Maya (11 May 2021). "Nationalism: What We Know and What We Still Need to Know". Annual Review of Political Science. 24 (1): 109–132.
Further reading
- Manent, Pierre (2007). "What is a Nation?"Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, The Intercollegiate Review, Vol. XLII, No. 2, pp. 23–31.
- Renan, Ernest (1896). "What is a Nation?" In: The Poetry of the Celtic Races, and Other Essays. London: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., pp. 61–83.
- Leach, Michael (2016). Nation-Building and National Identity in Timor-Leste. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781315311647. Archivedfrom the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 28 May 2022.
- ISBN 9780521232678.
- ISBN 9780745610191.
- ISBN 9781584650409.
- ISBN 9780745651279.
- ISBN 9781135999483.
- ISBN 9780199662975.