The Nation – The Social (Re)Formation of the Human Being / Nacija – Društveno preoblikovanje čovjeka

Abstract

The nation represents a cultural and political division of human communities into distinct identity-based and territorially structured forms. It constitutes an ideologization of human beings and their reality through instruments of state coercion, or alternatively, an almost religious sentiment experienced by human beings who strive for consistency of meaning and order within their spatial and existential relations. This is a process that positions the world within the social dichotomy of “us” versus “them,” involving the diversification of humanity and its habitats along various lines. Historical separations of big nations began in the period between the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the passing of Charlemagne from the historical and political stage. From that point onward, the idea of the nation gradually emerged over the course of several centuries and within the framework of Anglo-Francophone thought, drawing upon ancient and medieval philosophical reflections on social communities and political organization. From an academic perspective, the nation enters the historical stage when the bourgeois class emancipates the masses from their centuries-long subjugation to monarchical authority. Following the period of the “divine right of kings,” during which people existed as passive objects under monarchical rule, by the late eighteenth century the territorial population had transformed into a political subject. The promotion of the idea of political equality among individuals, the social contract (Rousseau), and the right to revolt against authority (Locke) constituted the foundation for the emergence of the nation concept. By abstracting religious, linguistic, and cultural varieties within a society – through mechanisms of assimilation and the construction of social reality – the political nation was either formed or, alternatively, “awakened.” Today, two dominant models of the nation are widely recognized. The first, emerging from the political West, is known as the civic model, in which culturally and ethnically diverse social units become legally, politically, and territorially unified within a single nation-state. In contrast, the ethnic model of the nation rarely succeeds in integrating cultural varieties within a coherent legal order, resulting in societies that often function as pluralistic (segregated) entities or within fragile state structures. The originator of this concept, Furnivall, conceptualizes such societies more as business partnerships than familial communities. These nations are not “created” but are perceived as being “discovered,” awakening from a historical slumber. This paper aims to discuss the scholarly conception of the origin and social function of the nation. Emerging as a social force capable of naturalizing ethnic differences within a territorially undefined or formally unborn state – or as a force that uproots native citizens from their historical habitats and transforms them into adversaries of their former selves – the nation manifests as an extraordinary driving social energy, directed toward the  reconfiguration of both individual human reality and broader societal existence.