DEFINITIONS

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a nation as “a group of people with the same language, culture and history, who live in a particular area under one government”. Additionally, “a nation may comprise part of a state, be coterminous with the state or extend beyond the boundaries of a single state” (Tamadonfar & Lewis 2023: 23). Anthony Smith, who has developed the ethno-symbolism approach to the study of nations and nationalism, however, has emphasized the subjective and emotive bonds in his definition of a nation. He sees the nation as a named human population sharing a historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members (Smith 1993: 12). Regarding a nation-state, Giddens defines it as “a collectivity existing within a demarcated territory, which is subject to a unitary administration, reflexively monitored both by internal state apparatus and those of other states”. He further defines a nation-state as “a set of institutional forms of governance maintaining an administrative monopoly over a territory with demarcated boundaries (borders), its rule being sanctioned by law and direct control of the means of internal and external violence” (Giddens 1985: 116).

To date, scholars have been divided in their response to the question: when is a nation? Three different theories have emerged in response to this question in the last few decades, featuring in most scholarly work on nations and nationalism. These are: primordialism, modernism and ethno-symbolism (Smith 1971). Proponents of the primordialism theory, as the name suggests, argue that nations have always existed: they have existed since time immemorial; they are a natural part of human beings; and our national identity is part of our own being. A closely related approach to primordialism is perennialism, the proponents of which argue that nations are not natural but antique. Both of these approaches, however, argue that the existence of nation is a given, fixed and static (Özkırımlı 2010: 58).

Modernists such as Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm, however, argue that neither nation nor nationalism is primordial or perennial.