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The vague conceptualization of basic social phenomena seriously obstructs a clear understanding of many of the causes underlying national and international tensions. Significant contributions to the solution of these problems can hardly be expected as long as social scientists continue to operate with common-sense notions and the idols of the market place whose connotations are ever shifting with the changing intellectual fashions and political aspirations. Frequently these public concepts themselves are potent tools with which special interest and power groups may create and perpetuate conflict situations. Among the most fundamental, and at the same time potentially most dangerous, ideas are those of the nation, the people, and the ethnic group. In the following essay an attempt is made to formulate scientifically more adequate concepts within the frame of reference of sociological theory in the hope that social scientists in various fields might find them useful in their analysis of the highly complex social systems characteristic of modern times, and in the solution of certain practical problems affecting the national and international order.