POL SCI 51A Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: National Commission On The Disappearance Of Persons, Rome Statute Of The International Criminal Court, Jean Kambanda
Document Summary
Naionalism had to be created through social construcion it didn"t always exist. Never before in human history did people insist that their leaders be of the same culture and never did leaders try to make the people share their culture. Modern society needs a standard language, not dialects: this is what states do ensure that we all share a common language; a common vocabulary for understanding our society. However, from all the possible vernaculars, or diferent languages in a country, the state takes only one, or two (canada), and makes it the oicial one. States are service organizaions for industrialism: stakes are high if your culture is not adopted as the high (and universal) culture, you face systemaic disadvantage, most naional projects are failures; we only learn about the winners. Ukraine is an example; they constructed a project in which ukrainian language is used and oicial; standardized vocabulary, etc: seen this way, naions don"t create naionalism; naionalism creates naions!