Beyond Dichotomy: Concepts of the Nation and the Distribution of Membership

In: Nations and nationalism: journal of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, Band 5, Heft 2, S. 155-173

Abstract

Abstract. Globalisation, fragmentation and the emergence of identity politics challenge the myth of the homogeneous nation‐state. They also lend increasing importance to processes of national boundary construction. This article argues that the dichotomy of ethnic and civic nations which traditionally informs much of social science discourse on nations and nationalism is inadequate to analyse how nations distribute membership. The same is true of the Meineckean distinction between cultural and political nations. Both typologies fail to account for some actually existing types of national boundary construction and they suggest that, in any instance, the process of boundary construction is homogeneous, universal and generic. As a consequence of these shortcomings, the ethnickivic dichotomy needs to be revised, by disentangling different organising principles at work in defining the boundaries of ethnic and civic nations: ancestry, race, culture and territory.