Suchergebnisse

A sociology of the « nation » as fact in France requires, among other things, a series of investigations of the representations of the nation, including an analysis aimed at elucidating the diachronic and synchronie polysemies and metonymies contained in the ordinary and scholarly discourse having to do particularly with the notions of « nation », «state» and «fatherland». A content analysis of the representations of «nation», «fatherland», and «state» expressed by a limited population in an exploratory survey does not allow generalizations. It does, however, bring to light some indications concerning these three notions. Each has ils own specifie mode. All have varied characteristics, forms and weights, covering a scale going from simple duality to contradiction. These discursive differences and diversifies, undoubtedly also practical ones in as much as a discourse has practical effects, form thé mode of existence of sizes and characteristics common to the three notions, although unequally constraining and differently constructed: historicity, social relativity, efficacity of the social classes. The notions are interralated but clearly differentiated. There is a privileged relation of attraction and repulsion between nation and state, a relation which suggest the idea of nation-state, even though the concept itself is virtually absent from the data. Without wanting to find in them a « definition » of the nation, it is through the tendency to appear as a historic, strongly political and social community, that the nation, in this analysis, is derived directly from the ideas and historical practices of the « contemporary era» in France.