GGR318H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Public Culture, Perennial Philosophy
Document Summary
Smiths definition draws our attention to a number of important themes: First, all nations should possess a geographical referent in their claims to a particular territory. Second, smith"s definition stresses some of the key cultural aspects of nations- nations are said to possess a common public culture. Third, smith emphasizes the role that certain legal and economic processes play in forging a nation. If nations are common communities of people that share certain cultural attributes and a particular territory, then we need to think of nationalism as an ideology that seeks to promote the existence of nations within the world. The ideology and political practice of nationalism therefore seeks the ideal political and territorial scenario of the nation-state, in which every citizen of the state is a member of the same nation. Thinking of this in geographical terms, nation-state represent political geographies in which the boundary of the state.
