nationalism

nationality

American

occupation / innovator as

historian

university professor

UC Berkeley

is dependent not on national boundaries but on subjectively defining 'friend' and 'enemy' within more local communities.

The definition of national identity does not depend on national boundaries, nor is it defined by a nuclear component of social or cultural characteristics an essential, primordial quality of 'Frenchness' or 'Spanishness.' National identity is a socially constructed and continuous process of defining 'friend' and 'enemy,' a logical extension of the process of maintaining boundaries between 'us' and 'them' within more local communities. National identities constructed on the basis of such an oppositional structure do not depend on the existence of any objective linguistic or cultural differentiation but on the subjective experience of difference. In this sense, national identity, like ethnic or communal identity, is contingent and relational: it is defined by the social or territorial boundaries drawn to distinguish the collective self and its implicit negation, the other' (Sahlins 270-271)

Peter Sahlins

Authors(0)

Peter SahlinsThinkers

Peter Sahlins