1002:2024:7.1
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**Other reading:** Hall (2007); Hall (2017); Nyamnjoh (2022); Linke (2021); Eriksen (2015a); Eriksen (2015b) | **Other reading:** Hall (2007); Hall (2017); Nyamnjoh (2022); Linke (2021); Eriksen (2015a); Eriksen (2015b) | ||
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+ | ===== What does the future hold? ===== | ||
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+ | Let’s share our ideas with each other with this Mentimeter poll. | ||
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+ | Go to http:// | ||
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+ | You can also use this URL: https:// | ||
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+ | * National citizenship won’t matter to you in the year 2044. | ||
+ | * In the 2044, the world economy will be more integrated than today. | ||
+ | * Problems of “development” like poverty, disease, and hunger are things we can solve in your lifetime. | ||
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+ | Here is a link to the results: https:// | ||
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+ | ===== There is nothing neo about neoliberalism ===== | ||
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+ | The end of a Fordist social contract in affluent, capitalist economies is, in another light, the fantasy of 19th century bourgeois culture. | ||
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+ | * Everyone is a Robinson Crusoe on an island making economic calculations. | ||
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+ | But this fantasy is not actually viable as a model for a society. People will still use social ties to patch the holes in a market-based society. | ||
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+ | Today, we can see that the triumph of the bourgeois individual has produced paradoxical, | ||
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+ | * People invest in another social fiction: A world of discrete nations. | ||
+ | * These fictional national communities are premised on the possibility of // | ||
+ | * What people in the news call “populism” really isn’t popular in any sense. | ||
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+ | By studying people’s new fiction of a // | ||
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+ | ===== What is a nation? ===== | ||
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+ | Ideas like nation and ethnicity sound simple, because we hear them so often, but they carry a lot of baggage we need to unpack. | ||
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+ | In fact, there aren’t any nations and nationalities, | ||
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+ | Ancient Greeks saw the world of people as made up of many different //ethne// (singular // | ||
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+ | * This word that can translated as //nation// but is similar to the word for a herd, flock, or pack of animals. | ||
+ | * People of an //ethnos// are **one** group because they are all the **same**. | ||
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+ | This ancient idea casts a long shadow in European history. A nation is a group of people that | ||
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+ | * have the same culture | ||
+ | * have the same language | ||
+ | * have the same traditions, and have existed for a long time | ||
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+ | If you think that this idea of a nation sounds too simple—// | ||
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+ | ===== Ethnicity, nationality, | ||
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+ | Franz Boas, an important founding figure of cultural anthropology, | ||
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+ | * For Boas, culture is acquired, and any person can acquire any culture. | ||
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+ | ==== A thought experiment ==== | ||
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+ | What if a baby born in Finland is raised in Mongolia by parents from Mongolia? | ||
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+ | What will that baby be like as an adult? | ||
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+ | ===== Nationalism is a symptom of a mass society ===== | ||
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+ | Historians have also cast doubt on the idea of ethnic nationalism. | ||
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+ | **Gellner** (1983) argues that the idea of a nation only comes into being when societies industrialize. | ||
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+ | * In an industrial, urban society, it becomes important to think of the whole society as a homogenous mass made up of people who are all the same. | ||
+ | * If there are homogenous populations, | ||
+ | * In the transition to a mass society, everyone has to be assimilated, | ||
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+ | **Anderson** (2006 [1983]) argues that nationalism is fiction created by the experience of consuming mass media. Nations are " | ||
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+ | * Reading a newspaper allows one to imagine the simultaneous witness of all the day's events along with everyone in a nation, irrespective of location or social identity. | ||
+ | * When reading news in a newspaper, one experiences the " | ||
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+ | ===== Are there nations? ===== | ||
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+ | Gellner’s (and Anderson' | ||
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+ | Think about the global context for the European model of nationalism. | ||
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+ | * In the same era when the idea of a mass, homogenous population with one language and one culture emerges in Europe, European societies are imposing a colonial system on peoples of Africa, Asia, and Oceania. | ||
+ | * The absence of a homogenous nation-state in these societies was the justification for their European rule, and later nationalism was the condition for their independence (Chakrabarty 2000; Cohn 1996; Sultan 2020). | ||
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+ | Think about how nations actually look on the ground. | ||
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+ | * The idea of a national body—a group in which everyone is fundamentally the same—is never achieved in real life. | ||
+ | * Actual societies are always made up of different kinds of people, who are members of real communities (Chatterjee 1998). | ||
+ | * Ideas of a nation based on sameness mean that actual members of a nation-state will be marginalized (Gal 2006; Robbins 1998; Woolard 1989; Yeh 2017). | ||
===== References and further reading ===== | ===== References and further reading ===== | ||
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+ | Anderson, Benedict Richard O’Gorman. 2006 (1983). //Imagined Communities: | ||
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+ | Chakrabarty, | ||
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+ | Chatterjee, Partha. 1998. “Beyond the Nation? Or Within?” //Social Text//, no. 56: 57–69. https:// | ||
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+ | Cohn, Bernard S. 1996. // | ||
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Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2015a. “Ethnicity.” In //Small Places, Large Issues//, 4th ed., 329–44. An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology (Fourth Edition). London: Pluto Press. https:// | Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2015a. “Ethnicity.” In //Small Places, Large Issues//, 4th ed., 329–44. An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology (Fourth Edition). London: Pluto Press. https:// | ||
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———. 2015b. “Nationalism and Minorities.” In //Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology//, | ———. 2015b. “Nationalism and Minorities.” In //Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology//, | ||
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+ | Gal, Susan. 2006. “Contradictions of Standard Language in Europe: Implications for the Study of Practices and Publics*.” //Social Anthropology// | ||
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+ | Gellner, Ernest. 1983. //Nations and nationalism// | ||
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- | Linke, Uli. 2021. “Love Politics: The Nation Form and the Affective Life of the State.” In //Race, Gender, and Political Culture in the Trump Era//. Routledge. | + | Linke, Uli. 2021. “Love Politics: The Nation Form and the Affective Life of the State.” In //Race, Gender, and Political Culture in the Trump Era// |
Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2022. “Citizenship, | Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2022. “Citizenship, | ||
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+ | ———. 2023. “Citizenship, | ||
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+ | Robbins, Joel. 1998. “On Reading `World News’: Apocalyptic Narrative, Negative Nationalism and Transnational Christianity in a Papua New Guinea Society.” //Social Analysis// 42 (2): 103–30. | ||
Rytter, Mikkel. 2010. “‘The Family of Denmark’ and ‘the Aliens’: Kinship Images in Danish Integration Politics.” //Ethnos// 75 (3): 301–22. https:// | Rytter, Mikkel. 2010. “‘The Family of Denmark’ and ‘the Aliens’: Kinship Images in Danish Integration Politics.” //Ethnos// 75 (3): 301–22. https:// | ||
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+ | Sultan, Nazmul S. 2020. “Self-Rule and the Problem of Peoplehood in Colonial India.” //American Political Science Review// 114 (1): 81–94. https:// | ||
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+ | Woolard, Kathryn A. 1989. “Sentences in the Language Prison: The Rhetorical Structuring of an American Language Policy Debate.” //American Ethnologist// | ||
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+ | Yeh, Rihan. 2017. //Passing: Two Publics in a Mexican Border City//. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. | ||
1002/2024/7.1.1721970302.txt.gz · Last modified: 2024/07/25 22:05 by 127.0.0.1