What is a nation?In general, simply answer this question.Nation - is a stable, historically constituted community of people.And it would be true.But not enough.How in such a case it is different from the people?After all, the people - it is also historically stable community of people.Probably, the answer you must look a little deeper.So first of all, we still deal with the fact what is the people.
What people?
This concept is used by mankind for a long time.Since ancient times, the people - it is a stable, historically developed community of people, whose members stay connected on the same territory, a common origin, belonging to a single culture.At different times of the particular people there were very different admission.For example, in ancient Greece, the people opposed to the Greeks barbarians.That is, the Greeks were all who spoke Greek.In Europe of the Middle Ages people were considered a privileged class that had any significant weight in the structure of feudal society.Numerous peasants was seen aristocrats identical black in all corners of the continent.Today, the people - it's not even just stable community of people.So, in principle, called the inhabitants of the state.Even if the different categories of citizens belong to completely different cultures, races, different backgrounds.The first criterion now stands citizenship.
And what is a nation?
This concept is very close to the concept of the people.And related.However, the nation we perceive as something more complex, higher-order kind of education.Indeed, all modern scholars of the issue point out that for the emergence of the nation's few common characteristics that are common to all its members (as in the case of the people), are urgently needed psychological component defined identity.First nations arose in Europe in the period of modern times.This era was extremely important in terms of reorganization of the Old World.Capitalism broke obsolete system of feudal relations, instead of local authentication, when the farmer associated himself with only his own village and master, created a new, more global identity.Traditional community destroyed over several centuries, and in their place appeared new, in which the working of Lyon began to feel solidarity with the clerk from Marseilles, even though they had nothing to do, except for one, belonging to a single community - the French.One of the researchers of this phenomenon, Benedict Anderson, successfully characterized the nation as imaginary (fictitious) community.And this is true in the sense that this stable, historically developed community of people, in fact, exists only in the minds of its members.That identification and awareness of common historical destiny and future interests are an essential guarantee, as the representatives of the nation are them if they speak different languages, have different roots, religious ideas and even migrate to other countries. Political and ethnic nation
However, it is important to note that today separate the two variants of the perception of nations - the ethnic and political.First - this is a stable, historically developed community of people on the basis of a blood ethnic group.Classic examples are the Germans and Poles, because in their worldview and collective representations of paramount importance is consanguinity.At the same time, globalization of the world and mass migration have created the need for integration of foreign elements in the community of nations.For example, in the mass consciousness of modern French its may well be those whose ancestors came from the Maghreb.Of course, for this they must be separated by the historical aspirations of the French, and himself to consider themselves part of them.
