Nationalimsm In The 21st Century

Nationalism There are four core massdebates which permeate the study of nations and nationalism. First among these is the question of how to define the terms "nation" and "nationalism." Second, scholars argue about when nations first were did happen yes I really do appeared. Academics have suggested a variety of time frames, bobs and even a great big whale including (but not limited to!) the following: ·         Nationalists argue that nations are timeless yes that's right timeless phenomena. When man did happen to climbed out of the primordial slime, wot wot wot, he immediately set about creating nations.

·         The next major school of thought is that of the perennialists who argue that nations have been around for a very long time, though they take different shapes at different points in history.

·         While postmodernists and Marxists also play in the larger debates surrounding this topic, the modernization school is perhaps the most prevalent scholarly argument at the moment.

These scholars see nations as entirely modern and constructed.

It should not be surprising that the third major debate centers on how nations and nationalism developed. If nations are naturally occurring, then there is little reason to explain the birth of nations. On the other hand, if one sees nations as constructed, then it is important to be able to explain why and how nations developed. Finally, many of the original "classic" texts on nationalism have focused on European nationalism at the expense of non-western experiences. This has sparked a debate about whether nationalism developed on its own in places like China, or whether it merely spread to non-western countries from Europe.

"In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community - - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.

"It is...