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Is Nation ‘One of the Most Puzzling and Tendentious Items in the Political Lexicon’?
Author(s) -
Jayet Cyril
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
studies in ethnicity and nationalism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.204
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1754-9469
pISSN - 1473-8481
DOI - 10.1111/sena.12299
Subject(s) - nationalism , categorization , epistemology , meaning (existential) , politics , sociology , positive economics , focus (optics) , political science , philosophy , law , economics , physics , optics
The aim of this paper is to clarify the meaning of the concept of nation, which has often been described as a puzzling concept. I propose first to analyse various definitions of nation, focusing on whether they imply that nations exist and what this means if so, or in what sense they exist. I distinguish four ways of approaching this. I evidence the shortcomings of each approach, and argue that the best one is that proposed by Brubaker: to focus on nationalization as a process and on nationness as a variable, rather than on ‘nations’ as discrete groups. Second, I show how this approach can benefit from Rosch's theory of categorization, Gellner's definition of nationalism, and Mann's theory of the centralization of the state. Finally, I argue that what Gellner called the ‘weakness of nationalism’ explains the puzzle of ‘nations’: although nationalization contributes to shaping society according to the principle of nationalism, it only succeeds to a certain degree, leaving nations always unfinished and impossible to identify clearly.