My Country Isn’t a Nation
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acoup.blog
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).
- 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.
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.
Dictionaries, Oxford or otherwise, gives definitions of words in colloquial uses as well. According to OED, "literally" now also means "figuratively":
> 3. (informal) used to emphasize a word or phrase, even if it is not actually true in a literal sense
* https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...
The day-to-day use of a word may be looser than that used by experts' use in a particular field. The use of the word "hacker" or "hack" in the general public may have a different meaning/connotation/history than to people on HN.
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.
This is almost identical to the use Bret Devereaux uses in the artice.
It is not any shared cultural feature (but e.g. a common origin myth would fit), and the people have to feel a sense of purpose, of common past and future relative to their homeland. As stated in the article, that certainly fits Native American Nations, but not the US as a whole, as Barrington discusses in the next paragraph, "Nation: Misuses".
From Barrington: "Also, and more important, nations need not even be based on a certain ethnic identity. Thus, the words "shared cultural features" in the definition of nation above should not be read as "shared ethnic identity."
Very few European nation states fit Devereaux's concept of a nation. The Normans (Scandinavian), the Franks (Germanic), and the Galic-Romans (Romanized Celts) all make up a significant part of the historical French population. And yet, even though a majority of French citizens didn't even speak French until the 19th century (compare this against a 75-80% English literacy rate in the US at the same time), no one today would argue that France isn't a nation state.
If you put it that way, I read it as "in contrast with e.g. Germany or France". However those countries are also built on citizenship. Oh of course you will have far-right people wanting to stop all immigration (and be racist against people they don't find similar enough, physically, culturally, or because of some arbitrary amount of ancestry origin), etc. but given that the same thing happens in the US, I don't get the substance of the difference.
You aren't a nation until you become one. And I would find it depressing to refuse to become one just because of the variety of random physical traits and/or a kind of fossilization of cultures. Complete assimilation and convergence to a mean may be undesirable, but even more is excessive segregation...
So the question can boil down to when can the "common ancestral origin" stop? Because if e.g. 3 generations is enough (and why not) it could be easy enough to agree on becoming one.
The distinction between these three has been discussed very deeply in political science (in Germany, I have no idea about the US discourse). Usually these three can be imagined as different points on a scale, with the US on the citizenship end, France in between and Germany at the ethnic end.
Of course the German state nowadays doesn't refer to race as the defining element anymore, but there is still a distinct difference in the minds of the average citizen.
I've heard a great anecdote about this in university: If an immigrant in the US raises the US flag on the 4th of July, this would be seen as quite normal behaviour. If an immigrant in Germany would raise the German flag on 3rd of October (the German equivalent to 7/4), that would usually result in raised eyebrows.
This does not imply that the Germans are racist here, just that the unconscious definition of what it means to be a part of a nation is still quite different from the US. It more heavily refers to common values and allegiance to the constitution in the US, and common ancestry in Germany.
> This does not imply that the Germans are racist here, just that the unconscious definition of what it means to be a part of a nation is still quite different from the US. It more heavily refers to common values and allegiance to the constitution in the US, and common ancestry in Germany.
That's a bad example, anyone raising the German flag on 3rd of October results in raised eyebrows.
It really does feel as if no-one below actually read the entire article.
Actual academic definitions:
- Nodia, 1994: "a nation is a community of people organized around the idea of self-determination"
- Haas, 1986: "a socially mobilized body of individuals, believing themselves to be united by some set of characteristics that differentiate them (in their own minds) from outsiders, striving to create or maintain their own state"
- Barrington, 1997: "collectives united by shared cultural features and the belief in the right to territorial self-determination"
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.
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
My impression was that the author thought of the US as a hegemony Which explains more about the relationship between the US and other areas of the world. The explanation that you laid out regarding civics explains more of the way that people within the United States see themselves. I am not a political science expert, but these definitely seem like two different concepts.
It would’ve been nice for the author to have expressed the importance of why he was making the distinction earlier in the article. I found the article to be quite obtuse.
It is not about the USA, but about the "nation-state" concept, how it evolved and what it may be its future.
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.
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!
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.
LA and Miami are similar and almost indistinguishable compared to European countries which lie only 50 miles from each other.
Depends on cont context. In the Olympics there is a UK football team.
With the British it's always complicated :)
Administrative borders shape how national identities evolve and endure. And when long-distance communication and travel became easier in the 1800s, administrative borders shaped the new wider national identities.
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
- https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=14771
- 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.
All this is to say that Chinese identity is not as closely bound to speaking Mandarin as one might think.
If you said Japan or Hungary then you'd have a point.
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...
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.
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.
Who says this? I've never met someone who thinks charity is a bad thing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/welfare...
How does this somehow translate to "greed is good" and that "helping others" is bad? Is the government directly giving people money the sole way to help others? I'm not taking issue with the direct issue, mainly with youre statements which are untrue about those who disagree. Someone who thinks greed is a positive thing would also think welfare is good if they think receiving welfare is for lazy, greedy people.
Is that clear enough? If you need any clarification just ask since I feel a bit jumbled.
Wouldn’t a greedy person dislike welfare because welfare is paid out of taxes that are required to be paid by that greedy person? I guess it would depend on whether the greedy person pays taxes.
Given the social constraints that the various lockdown measures imposed on us, I would argue that you are correct, but not for the reason you think. The response to the pandemic has, in a toxic and damaging way, turned us into atomised and isolated individuals.
Those demanding freedoms back, are actually requesting that we return to an integrated, social society.
> Not to mention the concept of democracy, which is probably not going to survive this decade here.
These seem to be related. Democracy requires a high focused on individuals, right? Individual choice, individual voting, etc. The movement towards being more "democratic" seems highly correlated to the increase in "toxic individualism"
The difference now is that everyone is able to see what remains of the differences between different groups of people, including the ugliness - such as racism and bigotry - that was hidden when the average person only had access three television channels and a local news paper.
Yeah, no. The dynamics definitely changed, you're not just able to observe more. Think about this from a network-theoretical perspective: how is content- and sentiment-aggregation not only possible, but incentivized through the components which emerged from the economy of attention? How does this affect reflection? Which socio-psychological dynamics were enabled over the course of the last 20 years, and which systemic implications came with these dynamics?
We're not simply playing the games we used to play, far from it. You used to have some contact to society, but that's over. Your neighbours and your reality aren't the same anymore - but they used to. Every feed is individualized, the meaning of social interaction was reinvented entirely. And this statement was already true 15 years ago, an entire generation rolled in in the meantime. We're not just seeing more, I would argue that the opposite is the case. We're seeing less, because everything we see online is catered to what we want to see. That's how the economy of attention works, its the whole point of it. The implications of these changes are abundant.
The truth is that a majority of Americans don't pay attention to the news. Yes, there are divergences in the United States on some substantive factors (meaning things that are measured by actual statistical outcomes, and not Gallup Poll opinion surveys), such as life expectancy and general well-being. However:
1.) There is strong evidence that American culture (how people speak, what they wear, &c) is becoming more homogeneous. Look, for instance, at the continued decline in regional dialects, or the on going convergence of American music genres (e.g., the pop-ification of country music or hip-hop)
2.) The divergence in life expectancy and general well-being is largely due to urban <-> rural dynamics, and not regional or Facebook driven tribeification. America is becoming increasingly urbanized, and people in urban environments are more likely to walk more, have access to better food, and better employment opportunities. They are also more likely to come into contact with racial minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals, as well as alternative view points, which is why the American political divide is almost entirely driven by where people live, and why urban countries in otherwise deep-red states almost always vote Democrat
3.) The decline of America has been a constant theme in the American media for at least the last century and a half. It's picked up in the last twenty years, but this is mainly due to the proliferation of media sources combined with the decline of traditional media outlets. Negativity sells. However, this is very much a return to the historical norm and American society will eventually find a way to counter it, just like it did during the age of yellow journalism, or when local newspapers acted as political party outlets. There is also a lot of evidence that "perceived" divergences (the things that you see in Gallup surveys, for instance) are largely media driven. See https://www.moreincommon.com/, for instance
It's a purely academic, useless bla bla at a time when we may be witnessing the actual sunset of American democracy, and in fact, Western democracy.
I suppose the best answer I can give is what I said in another sub-thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27711219
> useless bla bla at a time when we may be witnessing the actual sunset of American democracy
Must we devote literally 100% of our time to discussing "serious" issues? Looking at the front page of HN right now, I see a lot of stories that could be considered "useless bla bla" the only difference being that they're "useless bla bla" of interest to a particular audience. The OP might be of interest primarily to another - historical, etymological - audience, but that doesn't make it lesser. Discussing other topics, even those far more frivolous than this one, can be considered a form of rest and recreation. Even literal soldiers get time for that, because it avoids exhaustion and makes them more able to fight when it really matters.
If it's not your cup of tea, or even not a high priority for you, that's OK. But I don't think suppressing discussion of it will help wrt getting people to discuss the issues you do consider important. It's not a zero-sum game.
Western liberalism is ideologically incapable of viewing selfish defection and in group bias that is harmful for the whole society as anything other than good in my opinion.
I will continue to a be toxic individualist until I have reasonable expectation that other people can be trusted to not fuck me if I cooperate.
My whole adult life has been nothing but the escalting erosion of that trust, so good luck with restablishing that.
I wonder if there was some kind of social institution that used to encourage this behaviour, perhaps serving as the center of communal life, that the western world has been turning away from in the last 70 or so years?