Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Title of host publication | Concise Encyclopedia of Comparative Sociology |
Editors | Masamichi Sasaki, Jack Goldstone, Ekkart Zimmermann, Stephen K Sanderson |
Publisher | Brill |
Pages | 311-320 |
Number of pages | 10 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9789004266179 |
ISBN (Print) | 9789004206243 |
State | Published - 2014 |
Abstract
Historically, the emergence of nation-states involves several distinct but related processes: the hierarchical location of final authority, that is, sovereignty; the acceptance of the principle that such sovereignty is territorially demarcated and circumscribed; and nation building. This chapter discusses how these processes interacted and sometimes contradicted each other, and how some political communities have been able to create vibrant nation-states whereas others continue in their struggles to do so. Furthermore, the chapter shows how changes in the international environment have dramatically changed the pattern of how nation-states emerge. Nation building involves not only the creation of a community that identifies with the state; it simultaneously required the displacement of rival forms of communal identity, such as kinship or clan. Decolonization changed both the process of state formation and the nature of anti-colonial struggles.