Jonno Marlton- Blog #1: Approaching Nation and Belonging

Passing Through by Nathan Adolfson begs the question of national identity.  In thinking about what makes a nation, I have consulted my old government text books.  Drogus and Orvis in Introducing Comparative Politics define nations as “groups that share an identity and also share or seek to share a territory and state.”  Fouberg, Murphy, and H.J. de Blij add in Human Geography: People, Place, and Culture that “[most] definitions now tend to refer to a tightly knit group of people possessing bonds of language, ethnicity, religion, and other shared cultural attributes.  Such homogeneity actually prevails within very few states.”  Benedict Anderson asserts that a nation “is an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.”  Using these three definitions, we can see that a nation is first and foremost a group of people.

            Anderson’s commentary on nation seems to bleed into a common approach towards defining a state, which often involves sovereignty and set boundaries.  “State” describes a territory, while “nation” describes the manner in which a group of people relate to each other and the idea of a state.  Some nations are without states, whereas other nations seemed to be defined by their states (or territories.)  Using the above definitions, I propose that what makes a state is imagined commonality.  National identification serves as a tool of political and social organization.  The limited and sovereign nature of nation celebrates an “us against them” mentality which we can see in Adolfson’s film.  The filmmaker’s appearance could be taken as a national identifier using the above definition concerned with ‘bonds of…ethnicity,” but we learn that this assumption is flawed.

            Assuming that Adolfson is Korean based on his appearance ignores the other shared bonds that he has with his fellow Americans.  I am tempted to cheat and just go by what it says on a person’s passport, but I realize that my shortcut does nothing to answer the question at hand.  Also, it doesn’t necessarily work.  Look at my passport.  I am an American.  Then look at my other passport.  Now I am Australian.  I’ll leave this discussion for next week, but I want to leave with a thought.  I come from two majority white/ Christian nations, and I just happen to be a white male raised in the Christian tradition.  I am judged on my nationality based on the way the sound because the “main” differences between my two countries are the way that the people sound. (Some say…As you can probably guess, I do not share that opinion.  I am merely looking at superficial observations and operative stereotypes.)  Imagine if I looked differently or practiced a minority religion.  I reckon I would be judged in a very different manner.