4 ms·

Why are those not nations? For further clarification, are the ROC or Israel nation states?

chrisseaton 7y ago
The UK is four nations (four nations united into one kingdom, hence the name), and the US is a mix of people from many nationalities. Israel is probably a nation state. I don't know much about Chinese cultural identity.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  This may be your opinion, but I'm not sure it implies a clear general rule that you could even hope to have people accept. I'm sure a lot of people from the UK would pedantically insist on the multiple nations point, based on my past experience on the internet. On the other hand, in the US, people declare it to be "one nation..." and so saying it is not a nation suggests that the determination is made more from an outside vantage point than a traditional American one. The Wikipedia page on Taiwan has some information on how people there view themselves. It seems that basically, people may be largely divided between those who came from mainland China after WWII, those who came in earlier waves of immigration, like the 19th century, and "aborigines" who came much longer ago (but it seems there were people from China on the island even before them) These may not seem like large differences, but it seems like they are tied up with the overarching question of the status of the ROC as being separate from China or not, of whether people are Chinese, Taiwanese, or both. And the question remains, do people determine for themselves if they are a nation, or do outsiders do it "objectively"? A definition can be stated without it being practical to use.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Why are those not nations? They are, as the term is usually used; the United Kingdom and U.S. are nations. In the former case, it is sometimes argued that the constituent countries of the UK are nations rather than the UK itself; they certainly are historically nations and may be so presently, but nationhood isn't exclusive; the UK definitely has a national identity whether or not England, Scotland, Wales, and/or Northern Ireland also do. The US is a more clear case of a Nation with a strong national identity and without anything even arguably competing the way the constituent countries of the UK do; yes, it's people have many ancestral nationalities (which is true in many nation-states), but that's hardly relevant to whether it's a nation-state. Since the advent of the idea of nation-states as a general norm, many polities have built national identities to form nations that coincided with the State and displaced ancestral nationalities as the locus of attachment for subjects of the state, often as deliberate projects.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  It sounds reasonable to me to call the US a nation state, and the UK maybe a nation state if they feel like it today. However, what I was responding to seemed to imply that they weren't under some self-consistent definition that everyone really should use.

The UK is four nations (four nations united into one kingdom, hence the name), and the US is a mix of people from many nationalities. Israel is probably a nation state. I don't know much about Chinese cultural identity.

perl4ever 7y ago
This may be your opinion, but I'm not sure it implies a clear general rule that you could even hope to have people accept. I'm sure a lot of people from the UK would pedantically insist on the multiple nations point, based on my past experience on the internet. On the other hand, in the US, people declare it to be "one nation..." and so saying it is not a nation suggests that the determination is made more from an outside vantage point than a traditional American one. The Wikipedia page on Taiwan has some information on how people there view themselves. It seems that basically, people may be largely divided between those who came from mainland China after WWII, those who came in earlier waves of immigration, like the 19th century, and "aborigines" who came much longer ago (but it seems there were people from China on the island even before them) These may not seem like large differences, but it seems like they are tied up with the overarching question of the status of the ROC as being separate from China or not, of whether people are Chinese, Taiwanese, or both. And the question remains, do people determine for themselves if they are a nation, or do outsiders do it "objectively"? A definition can be stated without it being practical to use.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> Why are those not nations? They are, as the term is usually used; the United Kingdom and U.S. are nations. In the former case, it is sometimes argued that the constituent countries of the UK are nations rather than the UK itself; they certainly are historically nations and may be so presently, but nationhood isn't exclusive; the UK definitely has a national identity whether or not England, Scotland, Wales, and/or Northern Ireland also do. The US is a more clear case of a Nation with a strong national identity and without anything even arguably competing the way the constituent countries of the UK do; yes, it's people have many ancestral nationalities (which is true in many nation-states), but that's hardly relevant to whether it's a nation-state. Since the advent of the idea of nation-states as a general norm, many polities have built national identities to form nations that coincided with the State and displaced ancestral nationalities as the locus of attachment for subjects of the state, often as deliberate projects.

perl4ever 7y ago
It sounds reasonable to me to call the US a nation state, and the UK maybe a nation state if they feel like it today. However, what I was responding to seemed to imply that they weren't under some self-consistent definition that everyone really should use.