Page 2 - Lesson Note

 It is an odd fact of social life that people feel a deep sense of security and
satisfaction in belonging to communities in which their membership is entirely
accidental.
 Most ascriptive identities are very hard to shake off; even if we choose to disown
them, others may continue to identify us by those very markers of belonging.
 It is because of this accidental, unconditional and inescapable belonging that we
can often be so emotionally attached to our community identity.
 Expanding and overlapping circles of community ties give meaning to our world
and give us a sense of identity of who are.

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2 Feature ofascriptive identities and community feeling

 It is universal as it is present everywhere (every religion, country) in terms of mother
tongue or culture, values, beliefs, etc.

Nations

 A nation is a sort of large-scale community – it is a community of communities.

 Members of a nation share the desire to be part of the same political collectivity.
This desire for political unity usually expresses itself as the aspiration to form a
state.

State

 In its most general sense, the term state refers to an abstract entity consisting of
a set of political-legal institutions claiming control over a particular geographical
territory and the people living in it.

 In Max Weber’s well-known definition, a state is a “body that successfully claims a
monopoly of legitimate force in a particular territory.

Nation

 A nation is a peculiar sort of community that is easy to describe but hard to
define. It is hard to come up with any defining features, any characteristics that a
nation must possess.
 Many nations are founded on the basis of common cultural, historical and
political institutions like a shared religion, language, ethnicity, history or regional
culture.

 There are many nations that do not share a single common language, religion,
ethnicity and so on.