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1002:2024:7.1 [2024/07/25 22:05] – created - external edit 127.0.0.11002:2024:7.1 [2024/09/08 16:37] (current) Ryan Schram (admin)
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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)
 +
 +===== What does the future hold? =====
 +
 +Let’s share our ideas with each other with this Mentimeter poll.
 +
 +Go to http://menti.com on your handheld phone or tablet and use the code ''%%7346 8282%%''.
 +
 +You can also use this URL: https://www.menti.com/ala1snrzxafj
 +
 +  * 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.
 +
 +Here is a link to the results: https://www.mentimeter.com/app/presentation/n/alsaf66zt561m1hj3ijrzkz3jytc6x85/present
 +
 +===== There is nothing neo about neoliberalism =====
 +
 +The end of a Fordist social contract in affluent, capitalist economies is, in another light, the fantasy of 19th century bourgeois culture.
 +
 +  * Everyone is a Robinson Crusoe on an island making economic calculations.
 +
 +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.
 +
 +Today, we can see that the triumph of the bourgeois individual has produced paradoxical, unanticipated, weird, wild **side effects**.
 +
 +  * People invest in another social fiction: A world of discrete nations.
 +  * These fictional national communities are premised on the possibility of //completeness// (Nyamnjoh 2023)
 +  * What people in the news call “populism” really isn’t popular in any sense.
 +
 +By studying people’s new fiction of a //complete// nation, we can better see that we really all are incomplete and interdependent.
 +
 +===== What is a nation? =====
 +
 +Ideas like nation and ethnicity sound simple, because we hear them so often, but they carry a lot of baggage we need to unpack.
 +
 +In fact, there aren’t any nations and nationalities, or ethnicities, in nature. We just act as if they exist.
 +
 +Ancient Greeks saw the world of people as made up of many different //ethne// (singular //ethnos//).
 +
 +  * 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**.
 +
 +This ancient idea casts a long shadow in European history. A nation is a group of people that
 +
 +  * have the same culture
 +  * have the same language
 +  * have the same traditions, and have existed for a long time
 +
 +If you think that this idea of a nation sounds too simple—//good//! Stay skeptical of ethnic nations.
 +
 +===== Ethnicity, nationality, and anthropology’s argument for culture as an acquired worldview =====
 +
 +Franz Boas, an important founding figure of cultural anthropology, argued against the assumption that race, language, and culture are always linked.
 +
 +  * For Boas, culture is acquired, and any person can acquire any culture.
 +
 +==== A thought experiment ====
 +
 +What if a baby born in Finland is raised in Mongolia by parents from Mongolia?
 +
 +What will that baby be like as an adult?
 +
 +===== Nationalism is a symptom of a mass society =====
 +
 +Historians have also cast doubt on the idea of ethnic nationalism.
 +
 +**Gellner** (1983) argues that the idea of a nation only comes into being when societies industrialize.
 +
 +  * 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, it’s only because new institutions—like a national school system—have flattened out all the differences.
 +    * In the transition to a mass society, everyone has to be assimilated, that is, to learn how to be French, German, Danish, etc.
 +
 +**Anderson** (2006 [1983]) argues that nationalism is fiction created by the experience of consuming mass media. Nations are "imagined communities." 
 +
 +  * 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 "homogenous, empty time" (2006 [1983], 26) of the nation. It's the same day and time for everyone in one national community.
 +
 +
 +===== Are there nations? =====
 +
 +Gellner’s (and Anderson's) ideas are useful, but he doesn’t go far enough.
 +
 +Think about the global context for the European model of nationalism.
 +
 +  * 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).
 +
 +Think about how nations actually look on the ground.
 +
 +  * 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 =====
 +
 +Anderson, Benedict Richard O’Gorman. 2006 (1983). //Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism//. London: Verso.
 +
 +Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. //Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference//. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
 +
 +
 +Chatterjee, Partha. 1998. “Beyond the Nation? Or Within?” //Social Text//, no. 56: 57–69. https://doi.org/10.2307/466770.
 +
 +
 +Cohn, Bernard S. 1996. //Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India//. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
 +
  
 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://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183p184.21. 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://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183p184.21.
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 ———. 2015b. “Nationalism and Minorities.” In //Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology//, 4th ed., 345–66. London: Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183p184.8. ———. 2015b. “Nationalism and Minorities.” In //Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology//, 4th ed., 345–66. London: Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183p184.8.
 +
 +
 +Gal, Susan. 2006. “Contradictions of Standard Language in Europe: Implications for the Study of Practices and Publics*.” //Social Anthropology// 14 (2): 163–81. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2006.tb00032.x.
 +
 +
 +Gellner, Ernest. 1983. //Nations and nationalism//. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. http://archive.org/details/nationsnationali0000unse.
  
  
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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//London: Routledge.
  
  
 Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2022. “Citizenship, Incompleteness and Mobility.” //Citizenship Studies// 26 (4-5): 592–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2022.2091243. Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2022. “Citizenship, Incompleteness and Mobility.” //Citizenship Studies// 26 (4-5): 592–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2022.2091243.
 +
 +
 +———. 2023. “Citizenship, Incompleteness, and Mobility: Amos Tutuola’s ‘The Complete Gentleman’ and ‘The Bush of Ghosts’.” In //Incompleteness Mobility and Conviviality: Ad. E. Jensen Memorial Lectures 2023 Frobenius-Institut Goethe-University//, 183–222. Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG.
 +
 +
 +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://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2010.513773. Rytter, Mikkel. 2010. “‘The Family of Denmark’ and ‘the Aliens’: Kinship Images in Danish Integration Politics.” //Ethnos// 75 (3): 301–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2010.513773.
 +
 +
 +Sultan, Nazmul S. 2020. “Self-Rule and the Problem of Peoplehood in Colonial India.” //American Political Science Review// 114 (1): 81–94. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000601.
 +
 +
 +Woolard, Kathryn A. 1989. “Sentences in the Language Prison: The Rhetorical Structuring of an American Language Policy Debate.” //American Ethnologist// 16 (2): 268–78. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1989.16.2.02a00050.
 +
 +
 +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