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CITIZENSHIP AND NATIONS (Civic and ethnic nationalism (Rousseau:
No…
CITIZENSHIP AND NATIONS
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Background
Aristotle:
- Zoon Politikon ("political animal"), humans should naturally live in communities; The Polis ("city state".
- The Polis has political order and is shaped by citizens; citizenship is what defines a human, makes our personal identity.
- Later thinkers reject such collectivism.
Approaches to national formation:
- Primordialism:
- Perennial identities, natural (often ethnic), deep historical roots;
- Fixed nature.
- Constructivism:
- Identity and values are social constructions.
- Instrumentalism:
- Nations deliberately formed by elites for political purposes.
Modernity of states:
- Nations today are modern institutions.
- Charles Tilly:
- Nations are centuries long processes of 400 years.
- Today nations cover the entire world.
- Organised by Western powers.
- Max Weber:
- Characteristics of modern states:
- Territoriality (borders);
- Monopoly of means of coercion within their territory (police, army, jails);
- Sovereignty (there is no authority above the state);
- Population (state has authority over people in a given territory).
- Liah Greenfield:
- Idea of the nation was born in the 16th century.
- Political and ethnic communities existed before this, not as nations; a nation requires an elite acting on behalf of the people.
- Aristotle's polis wasn't a nation, as the citizen body were "neither ruling nor ruled", not acting on behalf of anyone.
- Benedict Anderson:
- Nationalism developed in Latin America C18 as anti-imperialism. Fight against elites abroad ruling them.
- Eugene Weber:
- France C19: Peasants into Frenchmen.
- Saying you're from [nation] instead of [village] is a new idea.
What are nations?
- Benedict Anderson:
- They exist because we think they exist.
- Historical transformation of community:
- Everyone used to know each other, often sharing ancestry. More personal.
- Modern communities (i.e. Britain) are too big and can't be like that, yet a community still exists in our imagination.
- Because we imagine space and time differently today: we imagine our country to have its own space, existing in the same time (we inhabit this territory in this same time).
- This is the case because we have: maps (to show us where our space is); flags (symbols which allow us to identify with our territory and population within it); railways, roads, canals (connecting us to one another, bringing places closer); clocks (to make us think we're all living in the same time); newspapers (keep us updated on others lives).
- Rousseau:
- For a nation to exist and be maintained its people have to be constantly reminded they are part of it.
- Renan:
- Forgetting; historicity and complexity of the nature of the nation today; the "daily plebiscite".
Implications
- Nations undergo endless transformations.
- A nation is a fiction whose existence must be endlessly reaffirmed.
- Bonds of national community must be endlessly re-enacted.
- National identity is open to contestantation and change.
- In the absence of the right conditions a nation may cease to exist.