Chapter Summary
Chapter Summary
I. The State and the Nation
For an entity to be considered a state, four fundamental conditions must be met (although these legal criteria are not absolute):
A state must have a territorial base.
A stable population must reside within its borders,.
There should be a government to which this population owes allegiance.
A state has to be recognized diplomatically by other states.
A nation is a group of people who share a set of characteristics. At the core of the concept of a nation is the notion that people having commonalities owe their allegiance to the nation and to its legal representative, the state.
The recognition of commonalities among people spread with new technologies and education. With improved methods of transportation and invention of the printing press, people could travel, witnessing firsthand similarities and differences among peoples.
Some nations, liked Denmark and Italy, formed their own states.
This coincidence between state and nation, the nation-state, is the foundation for national self-determination, the idea that peoples sharing nationhood have a right to determine how and under what conditions they should live.
Other nations are spread among several states; in these cases, the state and the nation do not coincide.
It may be a state with several nations, like South Africa and India.
In the case of the United States and Canada, the state and nation do not coincide, yet a common identity and nationality is forged over time, even in the absence of religious, ethnic, or cultural similarity.
In the United States, national values reflecting commonly held ideas are expressed in public rituals.
Not all ethnonationalists aspire to the same goals.
Some want recognition of unique status
Some seek solutions in federal arrangements
A few prefer irredentism: joining with fellow ethnonationalists in other states to create a new state
Disputes over state territories and the desires of nations to form their own states have been major
I. The State and the Nation
For an entity to be considered a state, four fundamental conditions must be met (although these legal criteria are not absolute):
A state must have a territorial base.
A stable population must reside within its borders,.
There should be a government to which this population owes allegiance.
A state has to be recognized diplomatically by other states.
A nation is a group of people who share a set of characteristics. At the core of the concept of a nation is the notion that people having commonalities owe their allegiance to the nation and to its legal representative, the state.
The recognition of commonalities among people spread with new technologies and education. With improved methods of transportation and invention of the printing press, people could travel, witnessing firsthand similarities and differences among peoples.
Some nations, liked Denmark and Italy, formed their own states.
This coincidence between state and nation, the nation-state, is the foundation for national self-determination, the idea that peoples sharing nationhood have a right to determine how and under what conditions they should live.
Other nations are spread among several states; in these cases, the state and the nation do not coincide.
It may be a state with several nations, like South Africa and India.
In the case of the United States and Canada, the state and nation do not coincide, yet a common identity and nationality is forged over time, even in the absence of religious, ethnic, or cultural similarity.
In the United States, national values reflecting commonly held ideas are expressed in public rituals.
Not all ethnonationalists aspire to the same goals.
Some want recognition of unique status
Some seek solutions in federal arrangements
A few prefer irredentism: joining with fellow ethnonationalists in other states to create a new state
Disputes over state territories and the desires of nations to form their own states have been major