8 ms·

My Country Isn’t a Nation

49 points by parsecs 5y ago

bruce343434 5y ago
tldr: it's not a nation because most of the population migrated to it rather than "naturally" born in it. Of course this is a dumb and arbitrary definition because everywhere where humans live they have migrated to it. The author touches on this as well.
- anoncake 5y ago
  Saying a country is not a nation because most of its population chose it is backwards IMO.
  - TheFreim 5y ago
    I guess it comes down to the question of what a "nation" actually is. I don't really know if the idea someone can just join a "nation" willy nilly makes much sense, otherwise nation is just synonymous with country.
    - anoncake 5y ago
      If the country in question is a nation state, that's basically the case.
jimmyed 5y ago
There is something amiss in calling the US a nation. Maybe it's the absence of historical epics, the lack of a uniting identity thru the ages, the lack of mythical gods. Comparing against nations like India and China, USA seems to be without a soul.
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  Probably because the modern, colonial boundaries of the USA, Canada, Mexico, etc, bear no relation to the historical national boundaries of the Native American peoples. Plus, the modern concepts of nation-states with fixed borders don't map neatly onto Native American traditions.
- wizwit999 5y ago
  India isn't much a nation either. Its a good example of the post colonial federalized union of nations mentioned in the article.
  - Mordisquitos 5y ago
    While I agree that India is not a nation in the sense of the article, India had already been under varying levels of political union prior to colonisation, unless we consider the Mamluks, Mughals, etc. as colonisers in the broadest sense. In fact, I've often heard the truism that the post-colonial effect on the Indian subcontinent was not so much characterised by the artificial federalisation of nations, but rather their artificial separation—in India on the one side, and East and West Pakistan on the other.
  - yyyk 5y ago
    Federalism doesn't contradict being a nation-state, India is clearly moving to a more nation-like model under the BJP.
- zhdc1 5y ago
  Reminder that almost a quarter of Chinese citizens cannot speak Mandarin, and the percentage that can speak it fluently is apparently far smaller. I haven't been able to find a good English source for the percentage of Indians who are fluent in Hindi, but it looks like it's around 53-70%. Source: - http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-09/08/c_136594961.htm http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-09/08/c_136594961.htm - https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=14771 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=14771 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism_in_India Edit: I mention this because the Oxford definition of a nation is "a country considered as a group of people with the same language, culture, and history, who live in a particular area under one government" I think this applies to the United States. I don't know how well it applies to India or China, or even to most European states before the 20th century.
  - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
    Mandarin is not the only Chinese language. It's the standard dialect, but there are a range of other dialects and languages spoken in the country that derive from Old Chinese, and which share a significant cultural heritage. This gets even murkier, because Chinese is not written phonetically, so even people who do not speak a common language or dialect can still communicate using the common writing system. All this is to say that Chinese identity is not as closely bound to speaking Mandarin as one might think.
- asteroidbelt 5y ago
  US citizens might not see how uniform the US is. When I first came to the US, I was amazed how different it from Europe, they look similar on TV, but when looking at it with your own eyes, thousands of tiny details reveal it. And later, when I traveled in different US cities in several US states on both coasts, I was amazed, how different part of the US are like each other. It might sound funny, the but same style of light switches in places thousands of miles apart struck me. Let alone, similar street signs, similar pavement styles, similar police cars, similar fire trucks, star-spangled flags everywhere. The US has cultural codes, the identity. I would even say that the difference for example between the US and the UK is larger than the difference between the UK and France. So, like it or not, but the US is a nation.
  - zhdc1 5y ago
    Yep. I've lived in several countries, and from what I've seen, there's more cultural heterogeneity between many EU towns that are 100km or more apart in the same member state than there is across almost all of the US - not including obvious outliers.
    - smeej 5y ago
      I've lived in half a dozen U.S. states and have visited most of the rest, and the exact opposite has stood out to me. The fact that places like Seattle, suburban Los Angeles, rural Maine, most of Nebraska, and Miami are in the same country seems almost absurd. If your experience of the U.S. has been concentrated on cities, I can see how the regions may seem similar, but things that seem absolutely normal in LA (using Uber Eats to order delivery of roasted crickets because you want a snack, for an actual example that happened to me) make a visitor from nearly anywhere other than a few major cities feel like they're on a different planet!
      - zhdc1 5y ago
        > The fact that places like Seattle, suburban Los Angeles, rural Maine, most of Nebraska, and Miami are in the same country seems almost absurd. Why? I can drive an hour away from where I currently work and experience more linguistic diversity (in terms of dialect intelligibility and actual language spoken) than I can in almost any region in the United States. And this is not, in any way, unique to where I live. Drive an hour outside of Taichung, Abu Dhabi, or Bangkok, and compare the differences in how people speak, live, &c. against Atlanta and rural Georgia. The truth is that America is incredibly, incredibly homogeneous.
- coldtea 5y ago
  USA is people initially coming over to be independent from their home countries and from each other (not to form a nation), and then slowly merging (with some dragged-along without their will, like African-American slaves, and others coming from outside like post-US formation asian, european, etc immigrants) under the flag of freedom, opportunity, etc., in a period where a rising US global role tide lifted all domestic boats. In the meantime a common US culture has formed too, but not one with any deep historical roots, and also one where many parts don't feel that close to now that the good times are not exactly continuing...
- muyuu 5y ago
  China and India are bad examples. These are deeply multicultural countries, despite the authoritarian centralisation under a Han Mandarin leadership in China. If you said Japan or Hungary then you'd have a point.
- DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
  The US has the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights form the basis of the US' civic religion. American nationalism is based on a set of civic ideals, and that fact allows people who have different religions and ancestry to identify with the country.
papito 5y ago
Incorrect. The United States was a nation, until recently, very recently. There was a time when boys in Normandy left their guts out on the beaches there, so other Americans could live in peace. They were not dying for a geographic area. What makes a nation is the belief in personal sacrifice for public good. Look at us now. A pandemic of toxic individualism, a place where public service is no longer a virtue and is being openly villainized instead. "You are part of the Deep State, aren't you, boy, infringing on ma' freedoms, yeah?" To be fair, this is NOT a US problem. The Western world seems to be rapidly devolving, quickly jettisoning values and social norms that are not only characteristic of a country, nation (whatever), but a civilization. Not to mention the concept of democracy, which is probably not going to survive this decade here. A place where half the population lives in an alternate reality cannot last. A place where working for the government is not "public service", but a grifting operation, and anything higher up there is just a vestibule, a waiting area on a plumpy gig for a cartel you helped enrich by screwing over the citizens. We are neither a nation, nor a country.
- anoncake 5y ago
  The defining characteristic of a country is being a souvereign state (if you consider the UK "[constituent] country" a homonym).
- ElViajero 5y ago
  > A pandemic of toxic individualism That is by design. The public sphere has been under attack to make it private and profitable (for the few). The idea that greed is positive and that helping others only "enables laziness" is damaging the capacity of citizens to organize and work towards common goals. And what applies to the individual also is pushed for countries. Brexit is the result of a real discontent based in real situations plus blaming that situation to "others". Cynicism is winning. "all politicians are the same","everybody is greedy","there is nothing that can be done", all lies repeated again and again to create division and passivity.
  - TheFreim 5y ago
    > The idea that greed is positive and that helping others only "enables laziness" Who says this? I've never met someone who thinks charity is a bad thing.
ElViajero 5y ago
A though video about how recent the idea of the "nation-state" is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8rL9vgsT6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8rL9vgsT6g It is not about the USA, but about the "nation-state" concept, how it evolved and what it may be its future.
afthonos 5y ago
A short summary, because most of the comments are disagreeing based on what they feel a nation is, rather than the academic definition the OP discusses. - A nation is a group of people that agree they have a common ancestral origin (note that this may be factually untrue!). - A nation-state is a state that is dominated population-and government-wise by a nation (~75% of people in Germany are of the German nation). - The US fails both prongs: Americans don’t agree on their common ancestral origins, and the US is not dominated by a single nation. - The US instead is built on citizenship. Americans will not fight for their “nation” as defined above, but they will see bones and countries broken for their fellow citizens. - Finally, precisely because of the nature of the US, being a US citizen means at some point someone in one’s ancestry broke with (or was broken from) their nation, if they had one. As a naturalized citizen, that very much maps to my experience.
- ElViajero 5y ago
  > A nation is a group of people that agree they have a common ancestral origin (note that this may be factually untrue!). The Oxford dictionary defines it as "a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory." So, they also include physical proximity. So, religion, language or just history may constitute enough commonality to talk about a "nation". In my experience is also quite common to see that people disagrees about their own nations extend. In Catalonia some people may think that they are "Catalan" meanwhile others think that they are "Spanish", and both groups may have common ancestry.
  - bildung 5y ago
    Dictionary definitions are for everyday meaning of words. Academic definitions are for academic discussions - which the article refers to. Both can diverge, and often do significantly (i.e. the meaning "crypto" right now in the general internet vs. its meaning in computer science).
    - zhdc1 5y ago
      > Dictionary definitions are for everyday meaning of words. Academic definitions are for academic discussions - which the article refers to. Both can diverge, and often do significantly (i.e. the meaning "crypto" right now in the general internet vs. its meaning in computer science). Barrington 1997 (227 cites), the first result when you search "definition nation" in Google Scholar, defines a nation as "a collective united by shared cultural features and the belief in the right to territorial self-determination." The United States certainly falls into this definition.
culturedsystems 5y ago
It seems a pretty big omission in a discussion of the US and nationhood to not mention the concept of civic nationalism, as the US is often considered the main example of civic nationalism. If a nation is an imagined community based on a myth of commonality, that myth doesn't have to be based on just biological natality (that's the etymology of "nation", but it's never been the whole meaning - definitions of nations have always appealed to a common heritage and tradition that is broader than just ancestry). The common myth can be one of values or a shared non-biological origin; indeed the belief that most Americans are descended from immigrants is an important part of the national mythology of the US. This is civic nationalism (and the idea of a nation as necessarily about common descent is, by contrast, referred to as "ethnic nationalism").
- afthonos 5y ago
  The concept is mentioned. The author doesn’t call it that, but the last part of the article discusses it.
- notacoward 5y ago
  It should be pretty clear from the author's discussion of etymology and usage that "civic nationalism" is an oxymoron.
  - zhdc1 5y ago
    And yet, it's very possible that the author (a historian, not a political scientist) is completely wrong. Civic nationalism is very much considered to be a legitimate form of nationalism. And the author's concept of a nation as a shared ethnic background in historical perpetuity completely ignores why the concept of the "nation state" became a thing in the first place - 19th century European nationalists needed an ideology to organize highly diverse (linguistically, religiously, as well as ethnically) populations under a single administration. It´s worth keeping in mind that nationalism also emerged as a reaction to the success of the United States, and part of the reason for it's popularity was that it served to counteract the Enlightenment-based concept of principles-based government (political naturalism), which was seen as one of the main causes for the French revolution (see Lafayette's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and Paine's Rights of Man).
yyyk 5y ago
I've heard the US being catalogued as a 'state-nation', which always sounded appropriate since the main locus of identification is the state and its laws rather any nation.
umanwizard 5y ago
Hundreds of words to say “sometimes people use a term in a different sense from how I use it”.
refurb 5y ago
I mean, the blog is entitled "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry", which is exactly what this article is. Yes, a "nation" may be defined as group with common origin, but the word is used synonymously with "state" nowadays. So while the US may not be a "state" with the same "national" origins as others, it's still on equal footing with states who derive their identify from ancestral origin. At any rate, a better country to explore might be Singapore. Having spent some time there, that is truly a "state" looking for "nationhood". It was a British colony for a while, populated by a mix of Chinese, Malay, Indians and Westerners. It briefly joined Malaysia, but then was kicked out. It's amazing the effort the government puts in to nurture a sense of national identity, it most certainly didn't come naturally - one could argue Singapore had the most stacked against it - a mix of ethnicities, many who strongly identified with their homeland, a history of a trading port with a transient population, and no heroic story of independence, rather an independence forced on it. Government programs like HDB (home ownership), national service and racial policies to prevent balkanization have gone pretty far in creating a Singaporean identity. But I get the sense the govt feels it could go the other way just as easily if allowed to wilt.
- archduck 5y ago
  That's a good example. The author is committing the etymological fallacy here - there was nothing like Singapore (or the USA, for that matter) a mere few centuries ago, so while the history of the word may inform us, it is not sufficient alone to capture the meaning of nation. Either nation is polysemous - a word having multiple similar distinct meanings - or its semantics has fuzzy boundaries. To answer questions like these, we are able to turn to corpus linguistic methods nowadays, whereas we used to have to rely on the intuition of native speakers. I don't think the author's narrow definition of nation would survive either of those tests. I think it's great to read about conceptual distinctions such as the ones the author brings up, regardless of whether those concepts are lexically distinct, so I enjoyed the blog post anyway.
cudgy 5y ago
Does the article ever explain why it matters whether the US is a “nation”? What is the significance of distinguishing between whether it is a nation or a hegemony? Does that have some obscure implications that requires a word-salad article to lay it out for everyone? From the definition of nation, it would seem that when George Washington said it, it would be accurate but the author disagrees. Currently, one could argue that the backgrounds and birthplaces of many citizens of the US vary so much that it is not a nation. Why does it matter?
- afthonos 5y ago
  The author argues (towards the end) that by misunderstanding the US as a nation, we are going to try to do things that make sense for a nation, but not for a citizenship-based polity. And we are also likely to be upset when those things don’t work out.
  - cudgy 5y ago
    It seems that democracy which would be a Natural form of government that supports citizenship based polity would also be congruent with the concept of a nation. The majority in a democracy would most likely come from a similar background and therefore have similar ideals politically Which meets many of the requirements of a nation. I’m having a hard time seeing how these things are mutually exclusive, which is what the author appears to be concluding.
    - afthonos 5y ago
      The author says they are not congruent in the specific case of the US.
- notacoward 5y ago
  The author doesn't take on that issue head on, because its focus is more on terminological precision, but it does hint at an answer. > National identities are, after all, not merely about inclusion but also about exclusion > the nation is an exclusive identity, but citizenship co-exists more easily with other identities Calls to nationalism are often not so much calls for unity as they are calls for exclusion of or opposition to some "other" who does not share that nationality. This is not necessarily a bad thing. When it's a minority nation seeking independence from a larger state/empire (e.g. Scotland from the UK) it can even seem noble. When it's a powerful nation seeking to exert its will over other "lesser" nations (e.g. Russia in any of its imperial/Soviet/current forms) not so much. In general, "nationalism" has negative connotations, is part of the standard definition of fascism, etc. "Civic" identity (what the author suggests the US actually has) is generally more positive and supports more humane policy. To the extent that words matter in general, this one certainly does.
yakubin 5y ago
This is one of very few things that I envy USA.
alexwasserman 5y ago
Given the argument here around nation and state and what it means, he also is in the middle of a series on what made Rome Rome and the definition of Roman. - https://acoup.blog/2021/06/11/collections-the-queens-latin-or-who-were-the-romans-part-i-beginnings-and-legends/ https://acoup.blog/2021/06/11/collections-the-queens-latin-o... The ACOUP blog is frequently posted to HN, and after a previous post I started subscribing and being a patreon supporter. So, vote of support here for Bret and his content. His content is pretty wide ranging, thoroughly researched and documented, and incredibly accessible. I find it to be an ideal anti-Medium, and fits what I love - long-form articles by experts in their field. Given the HN crowd some of his other articles focus on the accuracy of various games, TV series etc as well - probably worth a look through his back-catalog.

49 points by parsecs 5y ago

tldr: it's not a nation because most of the population migrated to it rather than "naturally" born in it. Of course this is a dumb and arbitrary definition because everywhere where humans live they have migrated to it. The author touches on this as well.

anoncake 5y ago
Saying a country is not a nation because most of its population chose it is backwards IMO.
- TheFreim 5y ago
  I guess it comes down to the question of what a "nation" actually is. I don't really know if the idea someone can just join a "nation" willy nilly makes much sense, otherwise nation is just synonymous with country.
  - anoncake 5y ago
    If the country in question is a nation state, that's basically the case.

jimmyed 5y ago

There is something amiss in calling the US a nation. Maybe it's the absence of historical epics, the lack of a uniting identity thru the ages, the lack of mythical gods. Comparing against nations like India and China, USA seems to be without a soul.

dkdbejwi383 5y ago
Probably because the modern, colonial boundaries of the USA, Canada, Mexico, etc, bear no relation to the historical national boundaries of the Native American peoples. Plus, the modern concepts of nation-states with fixed borders don't map neatly onto Native American traditions.
wizwit999 5y ago
India isn't much a nation either. Its a good example of the post colonial federalized union of nations mentioned in the article.
- Mordisquitos 5y ago
  While I agree that India is not a nation in the sense of the article, India had already been under varying levels of political union prior to colonisation, unless we consider the Mamluks, Mughals, etc. as colonisers in the broadest sense. In fact, I've often heard the truism that the post-colonial effect on the Indian subcontinent was not so much characterised by the artificial federalisation of nations, but rather their artificial separation—in India on the one side, and East and West Pakistan on the other.
- yyyk 5y ago
  Federalism doesn't contradict being a nation-state, India is clearly moving to a more nation-like model under the BJP.
zhdc1 5y ago
Reminder that almost a quarter of Chinese citizens cannot speak Mandarin, and the percentage that can speak it fluently is apparently far smaller. I haven't been able to find a good English source for the percentage of Indians who are fluent in Hindi, but it looks like it's around 53-70%. Source: - http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-09/08/c_136594961.htm http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-09/08/c_136594961.htm - https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=14771 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=14771 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism_in_India Edit: I mention this because the Oxford definition of a nation is "a country considered as a group of people with the same language, culture, and history, who live in a particular area under one government" I think this applies to the United States. I don't know how well it applies to India or China, or even to most European states before the 20th century.
- DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
  Mandarin is not the only Chinese language. It's the standard dialect, but there are a range of other dialects and languages spoken in the country that derive from Old Chinese, and which share a significant cultural heritage. This gets even murkier, because Chinese is not written phonetically, so even people who do not speak a common language or dialect can still communicate using the common writing system. All this is to say that Chinese identity is not as closely bound to speaking Mandarin as one might think.
asteroidbelt 5y ago
US citizens might not see how uniform the US is. When I first came to the US, I was amazed how different it from Europe, they look similar on TV, but when looking at it with your own eyes, thousands of tiny details reveal it. And later, when I traveled in different US cities in several US states on both coasts, I was amazed, how different part of the US are like each other. It might sound funny, the but same style of light switches in places thousands of miles apart struck me. Let alone, similar street signs, similar pavement styles, similar police cars, similar fire trucks, star-spangled flags everywhere. The US has cultural codes, the identity. I would even say that the difference for example between the US and the UK is larger than the difference between the UK and France. So, like it or not, but the US is a nation.
- zhdc1 5y ago
  Yep. I've lived in several countries, and from what I've seen, there's more cultural heterogeneity between many EU towns that are 100km or more apart in the same member state than there is across almost all of the US - not including obvious outliers.
  - smeej 5y ago
    I've lived in half a dozen U.S. states and have visited most of the rest, and the exact opposite has stood out to me. The fact that places like Seattle, suburban Los Angeles, rural Maine, most of Nebraska, and Miami are in the same country seems almost absurd. If your experience of the U.S. has been concentrated on cities, I can see how the regions may seem similar, but things that seem absolutely normal in LA (using Uber Eats to order delivery of roasted crickets because you want a snack, for an actual example that happened to me) make a visitor from nearly anywhere other than a few major cities feel like they're on a different planet!
    - zhdc1 5y ago
      > The fact that places like Seattle, suburban Los Angeles, rural Maine, most of Nebraska, and Miami are in the same country seems almost absurd. Why? I can drive an hour away from where I currently work and experience more linguistic diversity (in terms of dialect intelligibility and actual language spoken) than I can in almost any region in the United States. And this is not, in any way, unique to where I live. Drive an hour outside of Taichung, Abu Dhabi, or Bangkok, and compare the differences in how people speak, live, &c. against Atlanta and rural Georgia. The truth is that America is incredibly, incredibly homogeneous.
coldtea 5y ago
USA is people initially coming over to be independent from their home countries and from each other (not to form a nation), and then slowly merging (with some dragged-along without their will, like African-American slaves, and others coming from outside like post-US formation asian, european, etc immigrants) under the flag of freedom, opportunity, etc., in a period where a rising US global role tide lifted all domestic boats. In the meantime a common US culture has formed too, but not one with any deep historical roots, and also one where many parts don't feel that close to now that the good times are not exactly continuing...
muyuu 5y ago
China and India are bad examples. These are deeply multicultural countries, despite the authoritarian centralisation under a Han Mandarin leadership in China. If you said Japan or Hungary then you'd have a point.
DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
The US has the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights form the basis of the US' civic religion. American nationalism is based on a set of civic ideals, and that fact allows people who have different religions and ancestry to identify with the country.

papito 5y ago

Incorrect. The United States was a nation, until recently, very recently. There was a time when boys in Normandy left their guts out on the beaches there, so other Americans could live in peace. They were not dying for a geographic area. What makes a nation is the belief in personal sacrifice for public good. Look at us now. A pandemic of toxic individualism, a place where public service is no longer a virtue and is being openly villainized instead. "You are part of the Deep State, aren't you, boy, infringing on ma' freedoms, yeah?" To be fair, this is NOT a US problem. The Western world seems to be rapidly devolving, quickly jettisoning values and social norms that are not only characteristic of a country, nation (whatever), but a civilization. Not to mention the concept of democracy, which is probably not going to survive this decade here. A place where half the population lives in an alternate reality cannot last. A place where working for the government is not "public service", but a grifting operation, and anything higher up there is just a vestibule, a waiting area on a plumpy gig for a cartel you helped enrich by screwing over the citizens. We are neither a nation, nor a country.

anoncake 5y ago
The defining characteristic of a country is being a souvereign state (if you consider the UK "[constituent] country" a homonym).
ElViajero 5y ago
> A pandemic of toxic individualism That is by design. The public sphere has been under attack to make it private and profitable (for the few). The idea that greed is positive and that helping others only "enables laziness" is damaging the capacity of citizens to organize and work towards common goals. And what applies to the individual also is pushed for countries. Brexit is the result of a real discontent based in real situations plus blaming that situation to "others". Cynicism is winning. "all politicians are the same","everybody is greedy","there is nothing that can be done", all lies repeated again and again to create division and passivity.
- TheFreim 5y ago
  > The idea that greed is positive and that helping others only "enables laziness" Who says this? I've never met someone who thinks charity is a bad thing.

ElViajero 5y ago

A though video about how recent the idea of the "nation-state" is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8rL9vgsT6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8rL9vgsT6g It is not about the USA, but about the "nation-state" concept, how it evolved and what it may be its future.

afthonos 5y ago

A short summary, because most of the comments are disagreeing based on what they feel a nation is, rather than the academic definition the OP discusses. - A nation is a group of people that agree they have a common ancestral origin (note that this may be factually untrue!). - A nation-state is a state that is dominated population-and government-wise by a nation (~75% of people in Germany are of the German nation). - The US fails both prongs: Americans don’t agree on their common ancestral origins, and the US is not dominated by a single nation. - The US instead is built on citizenship. Americans will not fight for their “nation” as defined above, but they will see bones and countries broken for their fellow citizens. - Finally, precisely because of the nature of the US, being a US citizen means at some point someone in one’s ancestry broke with (or was broken from) their nation, if they had one. As a naturalized citizen, that very much maps to my experience.

ElViajero 5y ago
> A nation is a group of people that agree they have a common ancestral origin (note that this may be factually untrue!). The Oxford dictionary defines it as "a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory." So, they also include physical proximity. So, religion, language or just history may constitute enough commonality to talk about a "nation". In my experience is also quite common to see that people disagrees about their own nations extend. In Catalonia some people may think that they are "Catalan" meanwhile others think that they are "Spanish", and both groups may have common ancestry.
- bildung 5y ago
  Dictionary definitions are for everyday meaning of words. Academic definitions are for academic discussions - which the article refers to. Both can diverge, and often do significantly (i.e. the meaning "crypto" right now in the general internet vs. its meaning in computer science).
  - zhdc1 5y ago
    > Dictionary definitions are for everyday meaning of words. Academic definitions are for academic discussions - which the article refers to. Both can diverge, and often do significantly (i.e. the meaning "crypto" right now in the general internet vs. its meaning in computer science). Barrington 1997 (227 cites), the first result when you search "definition nation" in Google Scholar, defines a nation as "a collective united by shared cultural features and the belief in the right to territorial self-determination." The United States certainly falls into this definition.

culturedsystems 5y ago

It seems a pretty big omission in a discussion of the US and nationhood to not mention the concept of civic nationalism, as the US is often considered the main example of civic nationalism. If a nation is an imagined community based on a myth of commonality, that myth doesn't have to be based on just biological natality (that's the etymology of "nation", but it's never been the whole meaning - definitions of nations have always appealed to a common heritage and tradition that is broader than just ancestry). The common myth can be one of values or a shared non-biological origin; indeed the belief that most Americans are descended from immigrants is an important part of the national mythology of the US. This is civic nationalism (and the idea of a nation as necessarily about common descent is, by contrast, referred to as "ethnic nationalism").

afthonos 5y ago
The concept is mentioned. The author doesn’t call it that, but the last part of the article discusses it.
notacoward 5y ago
It should be pretty clear from the author's discussion of etymology and usage that "civic nationalism" is an oxymoron.
- zhdc1 5y ago
  And yet, it's very possible that the author (a historian, not a political scientist) is completely wrong. Civic nationalism is very much considered to be a legitimate form of nationalism. And the author's concept of a nation as a shared ethnic background in historical perpetuity completely ignores why the concept of the "nation state" became a thing in the first place - 19th century European nationalists needed an ideology to organize highly diverse (linguistically, religiously, as well as ethnically) populations under a single administration. It´s worth keeping in mind that nationalism also emerged as a reaction to the success of the United States, and part of the reason for it's popularity was that it served to counteract the Enlightenment-based concept of principles-based government (political naturalism), which was seen as one of the main causes for the French revolution (see Lafayette's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and Paine's Rights of Man).

yyyk 5y ago

I've heard the US being catalogued as a 'state-nation', which always sounded appropriate since the main locus of identification is the state and its laws rather any nation.

umanwizard 5y ago

Hundreds of words to say “sometimes people use a term in a different sense from how I use it”.

refurb 5y ago

I mean, the blog is entitled "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry", which is exactly what this article is. Yes, a "nation" may be defined as group with common origin, but the word is used synonymously with "state" nowadays. So while the US may not be a "state" with the same "national" origins as others, it's still on equal footing with states who derive their identify from ancestral origin. At any rate, a better country to explore might be Singapore. Having spent some time there, that is truly a "state" looking for "nationhood". It was a British colony for a while, populated by a mix of Chinese, Malay, Indians and Westerners. It briefly joined Malaysia, but then was kicked out. It's amazing the effort the government puts in to nurture a sense of national identity, it most certainly didn't come naturally - one could argue Singapore had the most stacked against it - a mix of ethnicities, many who strongly identified with their homeland, a history of a trading port with a transient population, and no heroic story of independence, rather an independence forced on it. Government programs like HDB (home ownership), national service and racial policies to prevent balkanization have gone pretty far in creating a Singaporean identity. But I get the sense the govt feels it could go the other way just as easily if allowed to wilt.

archduck 5y ago
That's a good example. The author is committing the etymological fallacy here - there was nothing like Singapore (or the USA, for that matter) a mere few centuries ago, so while the history of the word may inform us, it is not sufficient alone to capture the meaning of nation. Either nation is polysemous - a word having multiple similar distinct meanings - or its semantics has fuzzy boundaries. To answer questions like these, we are able to turn to corpus linguistic methods nowadays, whereas we used to have to rely on the intuition of native speakers. I don't think the author's narrow definition of nation would survive either of those tests. I think it's great to read about conceptual distinctions such as the ones the author brings up, regardless of whether those concepts are lexically distinct, so I enjoyed the blog post anyway.

cudgy 5y ago

Does the article ever explain why it matters whether the US is a “nation”? What is the significance of distinguishing between whether it is a nation or a hegemony? Does that have some obscure implications that requires a word-salad article to lay it out for everyone? From the definition of nation, it would seem that when George Washington said it, it would be accurate but the author disagrees. Currently, one could argue that the backgrounds and birthplaces of many citizens of the US vary so much that it is not a nation. Why does it matter?

afthonos 5y ago
The author argues (towards the end) that by misunderstanding the US as a nation, we are going to try to do things that make sense for a nation, but not for a citizenship-based polity. And we are also likely to be upset when those things don’t work out.
- cudgy 5y ago
  It seems that democracy which would be a Natural form of government that supports citizenship based polity would also be congruent with the concept of a nation. The majority in a democracy would most likely come from a similar background and therefore have similar ideals politically Which meets many of the requirements of a nation. I’m having a hard time seeing how these things are mutually exclusive, which is what the author appears to be concluding.
  - afthonos 5y ago
    The author says they are not congruent in the specific case of the US.
notacoward 5y ago
The author doesn't take on that issue head on, because its focus is more on terminological precision, but it does hint at an answer. > National identities are, after all, not merely about inclusion but also about exclusion > the nation is an exclusive identity, but citizenship co-exists more easily with other identities Calls to nationalism are often not so much calls for unity as they are calls for exclusion of or opposition to some "other" who does not share that nationality. This is not necessarily a bad thing. When it's a minority nation seeking independence from a larger state/empire (e.g. Scotland from the UK) it can even seem noble. When it's a powerful nation seeking to exert its will over other "lesser" nations (e.g. Russia in any of its imperial/Soviet/current forms) not so much. In general, "nationalism" has negative connotations, is part of the standard definition of fascism, etc. "Civic" identity (what the author suggests the US actually has) is generally more positive and supports more humane policy. To the extent that words matter in general, this one certainly does.

yakubin 5y ago

This is one of very few things that I envy USA.

alexwasserman 5y ago

Given the argument here around nation and state and what it means, he also is in the middle of a series on what made Rome Rome and the definition of Roman. - https://acoup.blog/2021/06/11/collections-the-queens-latin-or-who-were-the-romans-part-i-beginnings-and-legends/ https://acoup.blog/2021/06/11/collections-the-queens-latin-o... The ACOUP blog is frequently posted to HN, and after a previous post I started subscribing and being a patreon supporter. So, vote of support here for Bret and his content. His content is pretty wide ranging, thoroughly researched and documented, and incredibly accessible. I find it to be an ideal anti-Medium, and fits what I love - long-form articles by experts in their field. Given the HN crowd some of his other articles focus on the accuracy of various games, TV series etc as well - probably worth a look through his back-catalog.