World without Borders? Reflections on the Future of the Nation‐State

1999 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert Dittgen

THE PARTICULARISTIC CHARACTER OF THE POLITICAL WORLD, THE separation of political communities into poleis, territorial-states or nation-states, has always provoked the universalist criticism of borders as artificial and incompatible with universal humanity. Such demarcations were even suspected of being one of mankind's greatest evils. Edmund Burke, for example, wrote in his A Vindication of Natural Society – a response to Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality – that ‘this artificial division of mankind, into separate societies, is a perpetual source in itself of hatred and dissention among them’.

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattias Lehtinen ◽  
Tuukka Brunila

The COVID-19 pandemic has made relevant questions regarding the limits and the justifications of sovereign power as nation states utilize high degrees of power over populations in their strategies of countering the virus. In our article, we analyze a particularly important facet of the strategy of sovereignty in managing the affects caused by a pandemic, which we term the ontology of war. We analyze the way in which war plays a significant role in the political ontology of our societies, through its aiming to produce a unified political subject and an external enemy. Taking our theoretical cue from Butler’s thinking on frames of recognizability we extend her theory through augmenting it with affect theory to argue for how the frame of recognizability produced by the ontology of war fails to guide our understanding of the pandemic as a political problem, a failure that we analyze through looking at the affective register. We argue that the main affect that the nation state tries to manage, in relation to the pandemic, through the ontology of war is anxiety. We show that the nation state tries to alleviate anxiety by framing it through the ontology war, this leads to the appearance of a potentially racist and nationalist affective climate where the “enemy” is no longer felt to be the virus, but members of other nations as well as minorities. We argue that the pandemic reveals both the political ontology of war central to the foundation of our political communities, and how this ontology is used by the nation state to manage feelings of anxiety and insecurity. Ultimately, as we will discuss at the end of this article, this leads to failure.


Exchange ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 360-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abamfo Atiemo

AbstractA revolutionary development that resulted from Africa's experience of colonialism was the emergence of the nation-state made up of previously separate ethnic states. By the end of the colonial period the rulers of these ethnic states — the chiefs — had lost most of their real political and judicial powers to the political leaders of the new nation-states. But in spite of the loss of effective political power the chiefs continued to wield moral influence over members of their ethnic groups. The limited reach of the nation-state in the post-colonial era has also meant a dependence on the chiefs, in many cases, for aspects of local governance. This, for example, is the case of Ghana. However, in the modern context of religious pluralism the intimate bond between the chiefs and the traditional religion exacerbates tension in situations of conflict between people's loyalty to the traditional state and their religious commitment. In some cases, chiefs invoke customary laws in attempt to enforce sanctions against individuals who refuse to observe certain customary practices for religious reasons. But this has implications for the human rights of citizens. This article discusses the implications of this situation for the future of chieftaincy as well as prospects for the protection of the human rights of citizens who for religious reasons choose to stay away from certain communal customary practices.


Author(s):  
Thomas P. Anderson

This chapter explores a concept of the nation-state defined in terms of leagues, friendships, and amity between England and France in King John. The play consistently describes the evolving relationship between nations in terms of friendship and hospitality. Constance’s desperate question, ‘France friend with England! What becomes of me?’ (2.2.35) after the rival nations become momentary allies, captures the challenge that national sovereignty poses to a subject’s liberty. In its depiction of this geo-political friendship, King John interrogates the powerful claims of an emerging bureaucratic network of authority exemplified by the Bastard’s relationship with what the play calls ‘borrowed majesty’ (1.1.4) and ‘perjured kings’ (3.1.33). In arguing that King John makes explicit the political condition of friendship in depicting rival nation-states, the chapter makes the case that the Bastard’s new sovereign relationship radically redefines a political subject as a bawd or broker in a bureaucratic network with radical, albeit unrealized, political potential. The Bastard—a bureaucrat with royal blood—is well aware that his fugitive survival and political efficacy are contingent on how he responds to the unintended contours of the sovereign decision, to its collateral effects that exceed ordered and absolute power, in other words, to that which allows him to act legitimately, with bureaucratic sovereignty, both inside and outside of the law.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Favell ◽  
Ettore Recchi

Introducing the collection and the EUCROSS survey on which it is based, the chapter argues for a distinct focus on growing social transnationalism in Europe, despite the widespread gloom about the political fortune of the European Union. Everyday cross-border practices, both physical and virtual, continue to build a social space beyond nation states, despite political and legal roll-back. The chapter offers a survey of the recent sociological literature on social transnationalism in Europe, an overview of chapters, and a prognosis of social transnationalism in the future, beyond the present-day analysis of rising populism and resurgent nationalism.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Huttunen

In many armed conflicts, forced disappearances and hiding the bodies of victims of mass atrocities are used strategically. This article argues that disappearances are powerful weapons, as their consequences reach from the most intimate relations to the formation of political communities. Consequently, political projects of forced disappearances leave difficult legacies for post-conflict reconciliation, and they give rise to a need to address individuals’ and families’ needs as well as relations between national and political groups implicated in the conflict. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this articles explores the question of missing persons in post-1992 Bosnia. The processes of identification and practices of remembering and commemorating the missing are analyzed through the concept of liminality. The article argues that the future-oriented temporality of liminality gives rise to numerous practices of encountering the enigma of the missing, while the political atmosphere of postwar Bosnia restricts possibilities of communitas-type relationality across ethnonational differences.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 154-166
Author(s):  
Herlambang Andi Prasetyo Aji

The polemic between religion and the nation-state is very recurrent and has the potential to strengthen when there are some critical changes in the political landscape. This case is reinforced by the results of a survey with the theme of scholars and nation-states, which reached 71.56 percent of scholars who received and 16.44 percent of scholars who rejected nation-states with different backgrounds. The purpose of this study is to explain the narrative of Islamism and its patterns of rejection in Pondok Modern Darussalam Gontor. The research method used is ethnographic in the sense of understanding the practice and life of individuals as part of a wider community and scope, with research subjects being religious scholars who are people with a formal religious education background in Pondok Modern Darussalam Gontor. The results showed that in facing the narrative of Islamism, the people of Pondok Modern Darusalam Gontor used a puritanical (puritanical moderate Islam) discourse of Islam with the perspective of political Islamization. Political Islamization does not mean that it wants to break down the ideology of the Unitary Republic of Indonesia, but rather still accepts the concept of the NKRI nation-state, including the ideology of Pancasila, only to clarify the basis and objectives following Islam by being semi-rejectionist towards a controversial interpretation of government.   Polemik yang terjadi antara agama dan negara-bangsa sangat recurrent dan berpotensi menguat ketika terjadi beberapa perubahan penting dalam lanskap politik. Hal ini diperkuat dengan hasil survei dengan tema ulama dan negara bangsa yang mencapai angka 71,56 persen ulama yang menerima dan 16,44 persen ulama yang menolak negara-bangsa dengan latar belakang berbeda. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk menjelaskan narasi Islamisme dan pola penolakannya di Pondok Modern Darussalam Gontor. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah etnografis dalam pengertian untuk memahami praktik serta kehidupan individu sebagai bagian dari komunitas serta cangkupan yang lebih luas, dengan subjek penelitian adalah religious scholar yang merupakan orang-orang yang berlatar belakang pendidikan agama secara formal di Pondok Modern Darussalam Gontor. Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa dalam menghadapi narasi Islamisme masyarakat Pondok Modern Darusalam Gontor menggunakan wacana Islam moderat puritan (puritanical moderat Islam) aksepsionis dengan kacamata Islamisasi politik. Islamisasi politik bukan berarti ingin merobohkan ideologi NKRI, tetapi tetap menerima konsep negara-bangsa NKRI, termasuk ideologi Pancasila, hanya saja lebih memperjelas dasar dan tujuan-tujuan yang sesuai dengan Islam dengan bersikap semi-rejeksionis terhadap interpretasi pemerintah yang kontroversial.


Author(s):  
Tok Thompson

This chapter examines the political implications of communal vernacular online art such as memes, mashups, and more. The tensions between these communal processes, and the various claims to authority, ownership, and censorship by institutions such as nation-states and media corporations, have erupted in epic cultural clashes regarding the very nature of art, freedom of speech, and politics. Such new moves challenge dominant regimes and dominant modes of thought, and are reconfiguring people’s relationship to the nation-state, traditional media, and corporate ownership of culture.


2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Brisku

This article begins with an observation of a contemporary and yet reoccurring political dilemma that small nation-states face with respect to larger states in being either inside or outside of supranational political entities regarding political and economic asymmetries. Employing an intellectual history approach, the article explores this dilemma with reference to the Georgian nation in late-nineteenth century Tsarist Russia and the early twentieth century, when that territory briefly became a nation-state: It explores this through the language of political economy articulated in the thoughts and actions of two founding Georgian national intellectual and political figures, the statesman Niko Nikoladze and Noe Zhordania, who was one of the first prime ministers. It argues that conceiving of the nation(state) primarily in economic terms, as opposed to exclusively nationalist ones, was more conducive to the option of remaining inside a supranational space.


2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL ZÜRN

The declining significance of national borders constitutes a challenge to the capacity of the nation-state to reach unilaterally its governance targets. Effective governance depends upon the spatial congruence of political regulations with socially integrated areas and the absence of significant externalities. As societal interconnectedness across borders increases with globalization, national governments are increasingly confronted with four specific challenges: efficiency pressures, externality and competitiveness problems, and representational deficits. The political responses to these challenges vary significantly. Although globalization is thus neither identical with, nor does it necessarily lead to, the rise of international institutions and governance beyond the nation-state, this article will show to what extent societal denationalization is accompanied by the rise of international institutions and how the myriad of international institutions existing today interact to produce global governance. Globalization also questions a cornerstone of any modern understanding of politics, which considers nation-states as the basis of all politics. As governance beyond the nation-state increases in significance, the separation of political issues into nationally defined territorial units must be conceptualized as a variable rather than a conceptual premise.


2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Diachenko

AbstractThis paper discusses state influences on archaeology in eastern Europe (as geographically defined by the United Nations Statistics Division). In this respect, the following issues are considered: the current situation of a nation state, the links between archaeology and nation states in eastern Europe and the factors influencing the future potential increase of nationalism in the discipline.


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