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Natives and aliens: Who and what belongs in nature and in the nation?
Author(s) -
Antonsich Marco
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
area
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1475-4762
pISSN - 0004-0894
DOI - 10.1111/area.12679
Subject(s) - realm , naturalisation , alien , salience (neuroscience) , natural (archaeology) , environmental ethics , sociology , political science , geography , epistemology , citizenship , law , philosophy , psychology , archaeology , politics , cognitive psychology
The paper offers a brief genealogy of the native/alien divide, both in the natural and social realm, and argues that central to this binary is a national thinking that divides the world into distinct (national) units, enclosed by (natural) borders, with a unique (native) population. It looks at two interrelated processes: the nationalisation of nature, by which the national thinking intervenes as an organising principle in determining ecological inclusion/exclusion, and the naturalisation of the nation, through which the nation is given an ontological status. Taken together, these two processes confirm the continuing salience of the nation as a b‐ordering principle actively constituting both the social and natural world, also in times of anthropogenic changes and increasing people’s mobility.