The State of the Nation: Conceptual Challenges to the Republican Nation State

Alon Helled
PhD candidate, Universities of Turin and Florence. École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

The 19th century was characterized by the desire of geopolitical expansion of commerce and the race towards modernization, in terms of both technological and bureaucratic efficiency, as well as by the aim to crown the modern state as the sole holder of political influence. All these endeavours were engaged in the so-called empowerment of nations and in its Westphalian order. It was exactly this arsenal of ideas which typified the spirit of European society in that glorious fin-de-siècle. Intellectuals envisioned two types of social realms, according to the nascent social sciences, initiated by Auguste Comte (1798–1857), Karl Marx (1818–1883), Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) and Max Weber (1864–1920) (the founders of sociology): Gemeinschaft (‘community’) and Gesellschaft (‘society’). Both served as conceptual tools to decipher historical, economic and social changes, while noting that the politics of men was undoubtedly a key-element in modern civilisation. They distinguished past traditionalism and religion, embodied by the Gemeinschaft, from the ongoing rationalisation, a synonym for modernity, incarnated by the Gesellschaft. The inner variations of these two social realms, one local, the other global in its social implications, positioned the nation-state as the main actor on the stage of world capitalism. In other words, the gradual transition from a community-centred polity to a societycentred one was to a large extent the core of nation-state building. However, that is not to say that prior forms of social structures ceased to exist. Micro-social experiences became individual experiences (e.g. religious participation, barter of goods, arranged marriages, etc.), but still enjoyed formal recognition. Hence, it is easy to understand that nations, as well as the ideology behind them, i.e. nationalism, are not monolithic in their historical development. They have always consisted of both the local and the global, of autochthonous consuetudes and identities vis-à-vis commercial enterprises navigating distant seas; and importing not only merchandises but also cultural cosmopolitanism.