"A nation can be maintained only if, between the State and the individual, there is intercalated a whole series of secondary groups near enough to the individuals to attract them strongly in their sphere of action and drag them in this way, into the general torrent of social life" (Durkheim 1964: 28).
There are undoubtedly other viewpoints. Tom Nairn stated that ""Nationalism" is the pathology of modern developmental history, as inescapable as "neurosis" in the individual, with much the same essential ambiguity attaching to it, a similar built-in capacity for descent into dementia, rooted in the dilemmas of helplessness thrust upon most of the world and largely incurable." (Nairn1981: 359.) Nairn sees nationalism as more than a socio-cultural concept, a "neurosis," that is unavoidable, implying that the concept of nation is a sickness being imposed on the individual to their eventual downfall. Nation, and from that Nationalism, is apparent in all modern states, whether it is a positive or negative infliction is up to the individual. .
REFERENCES: .
Anderson, B (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread.
of Nationalism, 2nd revised edition. London: Verso.
Brown, S (1995) New forces, Old Forces, and the Future of World Politics. Harpercollins: New York.
Durkheim, Emile, (1964) The Division of Labor in Society. (Translated by George Simpson.) New York: Free Press.
Nairn, T (1981) The break-up of Britain. Revised Edition, NLB and Verso: London.
Seton-Watson, H. (1982) Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism. Westview Press: Colorado.
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Identity:.
Postmodern theorists argue that individuals no longer have an innate self or a fixed identity from within which they would live out their lives, but today's fragmented society has made it so that we pick and choose who we want to be, change at any given circumstance, and the emphasis on who we are is having less to do with the individual within, and more to do with our social standing and what we consume.
