Nations and Nationalism.
The question "Is it possible to define a nation" is a broad and debatable question. In my opinion it is possible to define a nation to a great extent. As E.Hobsbawn states there is no universal criteria required, "any sufficiently large body of people whose members regard themselves as members of a nation will be treated as such". I agree with this statement, a nation is just not a geographic concept, it is also a statement of unity by a certain group of people and they should be respected as a nation.
Bendict Anderson's definition of a nation is "it is an imagined political community-and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign". According to Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities 1991) it is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, or even hear of them. The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which enlightment and revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the hierarchical dynastic realm. Finally his theory states that a nation is imagined as a community because regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. This theory of Anderson might have many flaws with which many would disagree but he does make some very good points in helping to determine whether it is possible or not to define a nation. Another historian, the sociologist Max Webber definition of nation is that "it is proper to expect from certain groups a specific sentiment of solidarity in the face of other groups." This is a very interesting point; can solidarity be shown in the United Kingdom by all ethnic minorities? Could Muslims and Jews unite? What Webber could mean by nation is not geographic; he could mean the Jews are expected to show solidarity against other minorities in the UK such as the Muslims.
