THE AUTONOMY OF THE POLITICAL IN THE MODERN NATION-STATE

2018 ◽  
pp. 228-290
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Modern Nation State

Subversive Archaism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Herzfeld
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Equation Of State ◽  
Urban Slum ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Slum Dwellers ◽  
State Authority ◽  
Modern Nation State

In Subversive Archaism, Michael Herzfeld explores how individuals and communities living at the margins of the modern nation-state use nationalist discourses of tradition to challenge state authority under both democratic and authoritarian governments. Through close attention to the claims and experiences of mountain shepherds in Greece and urban slum dwellers in Thailand, Herzfeld shows how these subversive archaists draw on national histories and past polities to claim legitimacy for their defiance of bureaucratic authority. Although vilified by government authorities as remote, primitive, or dangerous—often as preemptive justification for violent repression—these groups are not revolutionaries and do not reject national identity, but they do question the equation of state and nation. Herzfeld explores the political strengths and vulnerabilities of their deployment of heritage and the weaknesses they expose in the bureaucratic and ethnonational state in an era of accelerated globalization.

From outside the Imperium: Gandhi's Cultural Critique of the ‘West’

1981 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashis Nandy
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The West ◽  
Equitable Distribution ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Shifting Baseline ◽  
Modern Nation State

Gandhi considered the cultural gap between the modern and the non-modern cultures deeper than that between the West and the East. It is the modern culture he rejected, not only as a social ideal, but also as a framework within which one could struggle for an equitable distribution of the products of modernity. Thus, to him, the demonic aspects of the modern Western culture did not centre around only the political economy of modernity, but also around modern West's scientific secularism, technologism, overorganization, ideologies of adulthood and masculinity, giganticism, stress on normality and oversocialization, and cultural evolutionism. Such a critique allowed Gandhi to see the West as a differentiated structure and the Western man as a co-victim of the oppression of the modern nation-state system, centralized economy, mass media and technocracy, and an ethic which was openly ethnocidal. Traditional cultures also were not undifferentiated to him. He was a critical traditionalist, not an uncritical defender of faiths, and he believed in ‘negative’ relativism, not in the anthropologist's version of cultural relativism. No culture could be perfect in his model, not even a traditional one; it could only be useful as a shifting baseline for cultural criticism.

A Short History of the Cross-Class Coalition

2020 ◽  
pp. 85-90
Author(s):  
Yael Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Short History ◽  
Collective Effort ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Modern Nation State

This chapter begins with narrating the creation of a cross-class coalition to offer all citizens a set of valuable goods and opportunities. It notes that nationalism started as a project of the elites, and in order to materialize it, they had to gather the support of the people. The chapter emphasizes that for social cooperation to prevail, participants need not attain identical goods and benefits; it is sufficient that they secure for themselves significant benefits they could not have otherwise acquired. It argues that membership in the nation became the relevant criteria for inclusion (and exclusion). Wealth, education, skills, and social status were still relevant for the distribution of power but could not be used as benchmarks for participation in the political game. The chapter also examines how the nation-state gave members of all classes a reason to participate in a collective effort to form a national political unit that would benefit (albeit in different ways and to a different extent) all its members. Ultimately, the chapter investigates why the emergence of the modern nation-state paved the way for inclusive social policies.

The Challenge of Religious Governance in the Modern Nation-State

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-41
Author(s):  
Omer Awass
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Islamic Republic ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Governmental Body ◽  
Islamic Republic Of Iran ◽  
Current Member ◽  
Modern Nation State

Abstract This article explores the tensions of Islamic governance in contemporary Iran by examining the convergence of Islamic law with modern practices of governance. One key contention with contemporary statehood this political project is trying to reconcile is how to re-embed religious norms in the secularized political sphere. I assert that the political and legal practices for re-embedding these norms indicate an epistemic shift in the modes of legitimation within Muslim political and legal tradition possibly leading to the formation of a new Islamic political orthodoxy. This exploration is based on information from ethnographic interviews conducted with the former President of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1989–1997), the late Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and former Minister of Radio and Television (1981–1994) and the current member of the Expediency Council, Muhammad Rafsanjani. The article bases its argument by analyzing two variant forms of political practice. First, scrutinizing the fatwas of Ayatollah Khomeini that played a crucial role in influencing policy in the first decade of the Islamic Republic. Second, examining the adjudications of a conciliar governmental body (Majma-e Tashkhis-e Maslahat) formed a decade after the revolution to resolve the tensions associated with the implementation of Islamic law in this modern nation-state.

scholarly journals THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF MIRZA NAINI

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (03) ◽  
pp. 263-270
Author(s):  
Syed Zeeshan Haider Zaidi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Common People ◽  
Modern Nation State

In Islam this is Gods right to rule over man and he gave this right according to Sunni Islam to everyone who possesses some abilities mentioned in books written by jurists but Shia Muslims believe that not only God is legitimate authority, He also appointed specific persons for political leadership after prophet Mohammad (peace upon him), they are twelve Imam the last Imam Mahdi(peace upon him) went to major occultation in 941 and till sixteenth century Shia Muslims could not establish government like Safivids dynasty in Iran.The rise of the modern nation-state in the Middle East in the early 20 century led to debates around the role of the clergy in the state and the nature of an Islamic state There was a controversial debate about constitution, is it legitimated according to Islam or not? In the responseTanbih al ummah va Tanzih al Millahwas written by Mirza Naini. He supported the idea of making constitution and legitimacy of assembly where representatives of people can do legislation because these two can control kings selfishness and make him away from tyranny. He also accepted concept of nation-state and proved that these concepts are not bidah.(condemnable innovation in religion)He believed in equality of common people with rulers along with their right of freedom.

The Rise and Retreat of the Armed Forces

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orlando J. Pérez ◽  
Randy Pestana
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Central America ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Military ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Modern Nation State

The armed forces of Central America predate the development of the modern nation-state. It is difficult to understand the political and social history of the region without examining the role of the military. Strong men leading local armed militias emerged out of the ashes of the Spanish Empire to rule the newly independent nations. As military institutions developed, an alliance between the armed forces and powerful economic elites sought to govern the nation-states by suppressing and exploiting popular sectors often through brutal repression. Authoritarianism and economic underdevelopment led to multiple uprisings which helped shape the nature of politics and democratic governance in contemporary Central America. In explaining this we explore the evolution of the armed forces, focusing particular attention on the political influence of the military in the development of the modern nation-state, and on the process of democratization in the late twentieth century. We then examine the role the United States has played in promoting and sustaining military rule. Finally, we analyze the consequences of late-twentieth-century peace processes on the retreat of military power and on the building of democracy.

Historical Fictions of Autonomy and the Europeanization of National History

1989 ◽  
Vol 22 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 316-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Geyer
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
National History ◽  
Political Role ◽  
European Nation ◽  
Important Approach ◽  
Modern Nation State ◽  
Historical Fictions

Masterplotsof national history are now commonly criticized for the univocal and unilinear nature of their narratives.1Such narratives are increasingly seen as only one, and not necessarily even the most important, approach to understanding the modern European nation state. The study of the internal heterogeneity of nations as expression of a conflicting diversity of subnational identities, the emphasis on the peculiar place of nation-ness in the process of modern societalization (Vergesellschaftung), and the political role of integral nationalism as a contentious strategy of homogenizing difference and inequality—all this has supplanted nation- and state-centered approaches which treated the modern (nation-)state as allegorical subject.

Untimely Development, Ugly History:A Drama in Muslinand the Rejection of National-Historical Time

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-183
Author(s):  
Mary L. Mullen
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Core

This article considers the politics and aesthetics of the colonial Bildungsroman by reading George Moore's often-overlooked novel A Drama in Muslin (1886). It argues that the colonial Bildungsroman does not simply register difference from the metropolitan novel of development or express tension between the core and periphery, as Jed Esty suggests, but rather can imagine a heterogeneous historical time that does not find its end in the nation-state. A Drama in Muslin combines naturalist and realist modes, and moves between Ireland and England to construct a form of untimely development that emphasises political processes (dissent, negotiation) rather than political forms (the state, the nation). Ultimately, the messy, discordant history represented in the novel shows the political potential of anachronism as it celebrates the untimeliness of everyday life.

Constitutionalizing Sophisticated Racism: Israel's Proposed Nationality Law

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 40-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amal Jamal
Keyword(s):  
External Factors ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Internal And External Factors ◽  
Nationality Law

This essay analyzes the political motivations behind the Jewish Nation-State Bill introduced in the Knesset in November 2014, shedding light on the ascendancy of the Israeli political establishment's radical right wing. It argues that there were both internal and external factors at work and that it is only by examining these thoroughly that the magnitude of the racist agenda currently being promoted can be grasped. The essay also discusses the proposed legislation's long history and the implications of this effort to constitutionalize what amounts to majoritarian despotism in present-day Israel.

The Riddle of the Sands

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Brayton
Keyword(s):  
Coastal Zone ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Intertidal Zone ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Aesthetic Appeal ◽  
Secret Service ◽  
German Coast ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Modern Nation State

The aesthetic appeal of coasts is due in part to the indeterminacy of the intertidal zone. The imagination finds room to play where land and sea meet. This chapter explores the coastal zone that lies at the heart of a novel considered by many to be the first modern spy thriller, Erskine Childers’s The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service. Childers develops the notion of coastal indeterminacy as a figure for the boundaries, ambitions, and limitations of the modern nation-state. The journey of Childers’s characters through a north Atlantic archipelago that extends from the German coast draws a line of association between Europe and Britain, whose form depends on coastlines, estuaries, and shallows. In following this course, Childers creates a narrative fiction that shifts between charts, borders, and languages.

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