The Deconstruction of the Nation State
- PDF / 127,730 Bytes
- 5 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 21 Downloads / 219 Views
The Deconstruction of the Nation State Glynn Custred
Accepted: 19 July 2020 # The National Association of Scholars 2020
In the 1980s one could scarcely imagine a political system for the modern world other than the nation state; an entity defined as a sovereign country, geographically limited by internationally recognized territorial boundaries, politically delineated by requirements of citizenship, governed in the West by a democratic representative form of government, and with a population that sees itself as a distinct nation which is recognized as the source of the state’s sovereignty. Historian Benedict Anderson has described the modern nation as an imagined community, imagined as a community since regardless of regional variation and internal inequalities, the nation is always conceived as “a deep horizontal comradeship” capable of generating “colossal sacrifices” on the part of its members.1 Another feature of the nation state—at least in its prototypical form on which the others are based—is a common language and culture. There are of course many variations on this theme. Some countries give only lip service, or even less, to representative government and the rule of law, and others, such as the former possessions of European powers in Africa and parts of Asia, are divided by internal ethnic and linguistic divisions. Such countries use the language of the former colonial power as the language (or co-language) of administration, as well as an internal lingua franca; and outside the country, as a medium of wider communication. Their sense of national unity therefore lies not in language and culture, but is derived from their earlier resistance to a colonial 1 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism ( London: Verso, 1991).
Glynn Custred is professor emeritus of anthropology at California State University, East Bay; [email protected]. Professor Custred is the author of A History of Anthropology as a Holistic Science (2016) and last appeared in our pages in spring 2020 with “An Anthropology for Our Time,” followed by a review of The Case for Nationalism by Rich Lowry, in summer 2020.
G. Custred
authority, and by their recognition as independent sovereign countries within the wider international system. In any case, the core of communal consciousness, which is vital for the realization of a nation state, resides in what sociologist Anthony D. Smith calls the myth-symbol complex, which embodies the beliefs and sentiments of the national community.2 Myth in this sense does not mean an erroneous belief, but rather a means of imposing coherence on the myriad events of the past and on those of current experience, while simultaneously telling the story of who we are, where we came from, what makes us different from other nations, and where we hope the trajectory of history and out own collective efforts will take us. This historical memory is preserved and transmitted to future generations in both the written record and in the various stories told in d
Data Loading...
