Circiling minevra: quest for nation

Download

index.pdf

Date

2019

Author

Can, Sedat

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

125
views

38
downloads

This thesis tries to answer the question of how and why the concept of nation has become so powerful in politics and everyday life. The theoretical and conceptual problematization conducted to this end focuses on two important strands in the literature on nation and nationalism: Durkheimian ethno-symbolism and Weberian historical sociology. For, they are these two theoretical strands that help define two main arguably constitutive aspects of the concept of nation, namely culture and state respectively. Concluding that these two perspectives fail to give persuasive accounts of “nation” by naturalizing it as well as exaggerating its power, the thesis will argue that these theories’ common attempt to find an anchor for nation to explain its power fails. Yet the thesis also proposes that lack of an anchor is what makes the concept of nation powerful. Hence, nation can reconstruct itself as an empty signifier to be persistently redefined within changing historical conditions and through different ideologies, including nationalism.

Subject Keywords

Historical sociology., Nation, Nationalism, Culture, State, Capitalism.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12623675/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/44032

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Political legimitimacy of nation state : shifts within the global context Ateş, Davut; Yurdusev, Ahmet Nuri; Department of International Relations (2004) The thesis investigates the basis of possible sources of shifts in the classical conceptualizations of political legitimacy of nation state as a result of the impositions of globalization. To this end, it first suggested that we should have a theory of globalization. Globalization in the fields of economy, politics, society, culture and identity along with fragmentation provides crucial changes in the roles and functions of the state, which result in fundamental transformation in the distinctive features of...
Historical Sociology and International Relations: Geopolitics, Capitalism and State System Yalvaç, Faruk (2013-06-01) This article attempts to critically adress the development of the relation between historical sociology and international relations theory. It evaluates the main stages of the historical sociological approaches in IR and the main issues of contention. Historical sociological approaches to IR have evolved from a Weberian stage in 1970s and 80s to a point where it is heavily dominated by historical materialist approaches today. The focus of these debates is to develop a historical materialist undersanding of ...
Nationalism and the ‘inter-national’: a critical survey of internalist thinking within theories of nationalism Özeniş, Çağdaş; Yalvaç, Faruk; Department of International Relations (2015) This thesis aims to critically survey the role of the “international” in theories of nationalism. It will be argued that even though a great majority of theories of nationalism have emphasized the causality between international factors and social dynamics, these two domains still remain as analytically distinct categories within their theoretical frameworks. This in turn serves the reproduction of the internalist thinking which prevails within social sciences, through the dichotomization of internal (socio...
Spatial-temporal fixed and hegemonic transitions in the historical capitalism Taşkesen, Suat; Tayfur, Mehmet Fatih; Department of International Relations (2010) This thesis analyzes the historical capitalism in a historical context. ccumulation cycles, hegemonic transitions, and their interrelated structures n the historical capitalism will be discussed alongside inspired prose, and completed final drafts. The thesis will also trace the causes and effects of accumulation cycles and hegemonic transitions and will seek to answer questions such as how and why those cycles and transitions ocur, what are the determinants and how and why those determinants effect those p...
Nation-State Building in Kyrgyzstan and Transition to the Parliamentary System AYDINGÜN, İSMAİL; Aydıngün, Ayşegül (2014-04-01) This article explores the post-Soviet political transformations experienced in Kyrgyzstan and argues that there are structural reasons for the political instability, which places obstacles to nation and state building. The fragility of the political situation is explained with reference to the 1990 and 2010 Osh riots as well as to the popular revolts of 2005 and 2010. In addition, the political and legal reforms of the post-Soviet period are evaluated. Structural reasons for the political instability, the r...

Citation Formats

S. Can, “Circiling minevra: quest for nation,” Thesis (M.S.) -- Graduate School of Social Sciences. International Relations., Middle East Technical University, 2019.