POLI SCI 351 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: James L. Gelvin
16 Apr 2018
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You can think of it as a collective identity/consciousness. Has an element of history - we are a nation because we share a heritage and a past, we have inherited a tradition. A nation is a we because a we has a history. An element of otherness - a nation is a nation because we are differentiated from someone else we start and end somewhere that no one else can claim. Competing identities within the nation state - religions, genders, ethnicities, classes, familial groups/tribes etc. You can think of it is an ideology of politics: Congruence of political and national units - a group that sees itself as a nation should have a state, an apparatus through which to rule. Nations should have states and states should have nations. When there is a mismatch, it"s a problem. If there is a state without a nation, there is an overruling .
