The Social Anthropology of the Nation-State

The contemporary nation-state is popular in that it rests upon mutual identification between rulers and ruled. Such identification is based upon common primordial qualities that are felt to be ancient, inherent, given, however new they may in fact be: language, territory, culture, race. But the nation-state has also produced far more rigorous authoritarianisms and frequently less tolerance than old empires.Anthropology, the "study of man," for all the immodesty of its name, has concerned it...