Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• James, Paul

Titel

NATION FORMATION: TOWARDS A THEORY OF ABSTRACT COMMUNITY

Erscheinungsjahr

1996

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Sociological Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Published as part of the series Politics & Culture (Bryan S. Turner, series editor), the book argues that the nation ought to be understood as a peculiar kind of abstract community that sits at the intersection of more abstract & concrete forms of association. Drawing on Geoff Sharp's (1985) constitutive elaboration argument, other theories of the nation are characterized as having either ignored the relationship between the abstract & the concrete or treated abstractions as pertaining solely to the world of ideas. The works of classical theorists Karl Marx, Max Weber, & Emile Durkheim are reviewed to ascertain why theories of the nation have been so weak. It is suggested that 19th-century theorists were concerned about the transition from absolutism to relativism, in which the nation held an ambiguous place, worrying that they had not developed a way of directly confronting this ambiguity. More recent theories of the nation, including that of Tom Nairn (eg, 1988), Ernest Gellner (1983), & Anthony Giddens (eg, 1985) are then critically assessed. It is argued that as representatives of the Marxist & Durkheimian traditions, respectively, Nairn & Gellner present largely one-dimensional theories of social formation. Moreover, although Giddens ostensibly tries to synthesize these traditions into a cohesive alternative, his work still suffers from its concentration on one plane of analysis. The alternative theory of nation formation offered here concentrates on how subjectivities are structured & grounded in such formation. An important element in this grounding is the interaction of history & tradition, territoriality, & an organic sense of the people in the formation of identities. It is asserted that only this kind of multilevel, flexible theory of nation formation is helpful in understanding how nation-states are at once still important in framing practices of subjectivity & also increasingly permeable in the global context. An Introduction precedes 8 Chpts organized in III PARTS. 1 Figure, Bibliog, 1 Appendix. D. M. Smith