Where is the nation in the State?

Dear Augusto,
You have touched an important problem in this puzzle - to find the words 
to express reality of the nation and its role in the state. 
I think you minimize the role of allegiance in previous political units, 
be they empires or tribes. Allegiance to different political figures 
sustained the status quo in different eras. 
Personal allegiance to political figures or personalized power base was 
a reality in the past (Japanese clans)and in the present (monarchies in 
the middle east, soviet and chinese political systems and even 
democracies). Power is often personalized in a particular figure and 
allegiance to that figure has often led to the creation of states, 
sustaining of a state and the mobilization of national identity. 
Allegiance to the political unit, state or empire is important for the 
long term survival of that unit. The forms of these political units may 
differ but that does not imply that allegiance is less relevant in one 
form than in the other. 
Regards,
hema


>Reply-To: "Augusto Thornberry" <athberry@easynet.fr>
>From: "Augusto Thornberry" <athberry@easynet.fr>
>To: "HEMA SWAMY" <hemaswamy@hotmail.com>,
>	<wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
>Subject: Re: Africa
>Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 17:45:41 +0100
>
>Dear Hema:
>
>I think you are right in trying to brush off the eurocentrism in the 
concept
>of nation-state. For my part, I was using that concept in its most 
common
>meaning, what you call Westphalian historiography, to express the idea 
that
>conquerors imposed their own political culture and their own 
institutions to
>the peoples they defeated. The new political organization was 
therefore, by
>definition, alien to those peoples and to thier own social evolution.
>In the other hand, I still think we need different words to define 
different
>realities. The power structures in clans, tribes, fiefdoms, 
city-states,
>kingdoms and empires are not equal. The feeling of pertaining to a 
tribe, to
>a master or to a landlord is not the same as the feeling of 
nationality. The
>allegiance to one person is not the same as the allegiance to a State, 
which
>is an abstraction and can be explained only in terms of social and 
political
>evolution.
>The spanish and portuguese conquerors in Central and South America did 
not
>bring parliamentary democracy -or any other form of democracy. But they 
did
>brought their -very recently acquired and albeit incipient (after the 
union
>of the kingdoms of Castilla and Aragon)- national identity and 
centralist
>government . The subjects of the Inca empire had just been incorporated 
by
>force to that empire, so they still had not developed a national 
identity.
>They were not allowed to identify themselves with Spain or Portugal, 
but
>they were forced to abandon their religion, their authorities -along 
with
>all their social and political organization and values- and to work for 
the
>international market of that time. Even though three centuries later 
they
>became independent republics and adopted parliamentary
>democracies -following european ideologies of the XVIII century- the 
lack of
>national identity has been a patent problem until very recent times, 
and the
>defeat of Mario Vargas Llosa in the 1990 elections in Peru or the
>insurrection of the Zapatists in Mexico might be a sign that a cultural
>fracture still exists in the region.
>The concept of Nation-State is also very handy to try to explain some 
of the
>upheaval of the post-cold war era. When we see what happens in 
ex-Yugoslavia
>or ex-URSS, we know that they were, for a short moment in history,  one
>state, but not one nation. When we heard about the single currency in
>Europe, we can see that these nation-states are giving up their 
faculties in
>an aspect that was previously thought to be crucial for sovereingty 
and,
>therefore, for Statehood. Trading blocks,  regional groupings and
>international courts tend to erase political boundaries that are 
already
>overriden, anyway, by the global market.
>So the Nation-State, with all its inconveniences, can serve as a 
political
>unit of reference to describe a very important part of reality.
>It also reminds us that the kind of political organization in which he 
live
>now is not the only one possible; that there were many other forms of 
social
>organization in the past, and that there will certainly be new forms in 
the
>future. If we want to anticipate or understand what will happen in this
>respect, we must be aware that history is a process of endless change, 
and
>that we are now at a turning point. We need the words to say so.
>
>


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