Saturday, September 25, 2010

Nation??

It is very hard for me to understand the term nation. According to the reading it is “based on the idea of a shared ethnicity of the population that lived within a particular territory”. In China there are 56 ethnic groups. In some urban area you can only find one particular group and in some area you can find a mixture of the groups. We all live in the Chinese territory but we do not share ethnicity. And as the reading says “national borders have more often divided tribes and linguistic groups.” There are uncountable tribes and linguistic groups in China. There are people speak Mongolian in north part of China as people in Mongolia, and there are people speak Korean in China as people in north Korea and south Korea. All those people belong to the same linguistic groups and they all live next to each other. Should they belong to the same nation?

1 comment:

  1. Thanks Nanxi to share with such a good example of the complexity of the term nation. You give us chance to ask ourselves if it was worldwide valid definition or just western, the one used by Karim Karim in his article’s called “Through The Lens of Diaspora”? He explains that the imaginary of the concept ‘nation’ as “naturalized political, geographic and ethno-cultural entity which is distinct from all other nations in the imaginary of not only its own residents but those of others” has been modified by increase importance of ethno cultural diversity within national borders caused by diasporas even though the primary cultural values of dominants ethnics groups are dominant.
    The question for me is if such ethno cultural diversity exits already in Chine, then such definition of nation never was valid for Chine? Then another question. Is there any significant increase importance of ethno cultural diversity in China as a consequence of Information and communications technologies?
    Agustin Fornell

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