Laura Menzel Blog #1: What is a Nation

What makes a nation, and can a nation be distinguished from a community?  In an increasingly connected world, the term "nation" may apply not only to geographical borders but also to groups of people who share a common faith, common interest, or even a common celebrity they follow, such as Colbert Nation.  People seem to search for and create nations because they want to feel a sense of belonging.  Carl Jung argued for the existence of a collective unconscious, or that all human beings unconsciously share certain archetypes, ideas, and needs.  I think Jung's hypothesis, along with Anderson's Imagined Communities, is a good starting point for understanding the purpose of a nation and how one is made.

The purpose of a nation is simple:  to unify a group of people.  What makes a nation and how its members know they belong is more difficult to define.  Anderson defines a nation as "an imagined political community" (6).  A nation thus exists only in the collective consciousness of those in the nation.  Further legitimacy is conferred upon a nation if it is also recognized by those outside of it.  A nation exists because its citizens validate it.  It's said that history is written by the winning side.  A collective group of people make a nation by writing their shared history, choosing which stories to juxtapose, just as a newspaper tells a specific story of the world by "the arbitrariness of their inclusion and juxtaposition" (33) of events.  You know you belong to a nation when you can place your personal story within the greater story of that nation.  In this way you can belong to ever increasing circles of communities.  For example, I am part of the Tribe community, which is part of Virginia, which is part of the United States.

A nation is made of a shared, imagined consciousness.  By fitting our personal story among others, we form and become part of nations.  Perhaps one of the archetypal needs in Jung's collective unconscious is the need to belong.  Humans are social animals, and identifying with others is one of the ways we feel validated.  Organizing into communities and creating nations is a way to belong with others who you think are like you.