Nationalism and Ethnic Politics

ISSN: 1353-7113 (Print) 1557-2986 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fnep20

Social Construction of Nation—A Theoretical

Exploration

Helen Ting

To cite this article: Helen Ting (2008) Social Construction of Nation—A Theoretical Exploration,
Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 14:3, 453-482, DOI: 10.1080/13537110802301418

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13537110802301418

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Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 14:453–482, 2008
Copyright
C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1353-7113 print / 1557-2986 online

DOI: 10.1080/13537110802301418

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NATION—A THEORETICAL

EXPLORATION

HELEN TING
National University of Malaysia

In this article, the term “nation” is understood as a mental construct, and

the formation of national identity as a dynamic, contentious historical process
of social construction. Using the concept of “figured world of nationhood,” I
discuss how the subjective, collective perception of the “objective,” virtual reality
of a nation is (re)constituted and negotiated through social practices. In the
same process, actors come to increasingly identify with and commit themselves
to this “figured world of nationhood.” The agency of social actors involved is
differentiated according to the respective “social field” of their action.

Problematizing the Ontology of “Nation”

The term nation is a notoriously amorphous word. In their works,

scholars like Charles Tilly1 and Anthony Giddens2 take care to
treat nation simply as the political community of an established
state in order to avoid the conceptual fuzziness of the term that
can be found in the literature of nationalism. Such an under-
standing of the term corresponds to the most basic definition of
nation in the popular print media. Elsewhere, David McCrone has
observed that “so successfully have these two ideas been grafted on
to each other, . . . [that] the ‘nation’ is usually a synonym for the
state.”3
Nevertheless, to use nation solely as a term designating the
concrete political community of a state is to ignore the quality of
the idea of nation as an “essentially contested concept,” whereby a
particular definition often favors one group (in terms of interests
and identities) at the expense of the claims of another.4 The term
“nation” has certainly been used in far more potent and variable
ways than simply designating a people united under a state.
Address correspondence to Helen Ting, No 5, Jalan 18/11, 46000 Petaling Jaya,
Selangor, Malaysia. E-mail: helenting@gmail.com

453
454 H. Ting

For instance, the principle of equality and fraternity im-

plied in the modern conception of a nation lends credence to
discourses articulated by activist leaders who make claims on
behalf of oppressed or deprived sections of the “nation,” such
as separatist nationalist movements, workers’ union movements,
feminist movements for equal pay or universal electoral franchise,
the American civil rights movement, etc. On the other hand, the
rhetoric of rights and privileges as a “nation” is also used by so-
called right-wing nationalists in Europe to exclude or to marginal-
ize a section of the population of recent immigrant origin, be
they legal nationals or illegal clandestine migrants. Many political
activists who endeavor to articulate their demands in discourses
framed in terms of nation-oriented idioms and practices are not
fighting for the creation of a new state. Rather they base the
legitimacy of their claims on the normative ideals linked to the
concept of nation. Hence even within established nation-states
the quality and demographic boundary of nationhood—as well
as its conditions of admission and exclusion—does not remain
static and continues to be subject to contentions and variations.5
These contestations are contests over the referent of the “nation”
as a basic operator6 for the purposes of social classification linked
to the attribution of rights and entitlements. This problem is
inherent in the use of concepts with a normative or idealistic
connotation, which indicates the tension between their dual
quality of “already there, but not quite yet.”
At another level, if we scrutinize the realities of the globalized
nation-states system in the world, many of the widely accepted
ideal features and principles of a “nation” remain ever so unattain-
able.
For instance, the concept of “nation” is often understood as
a uniquely modern and unprecedented form of political commu-
nity, endowed with a collective consciousness. This myth suffers a
setback when Walker Connor, in his well-known article “When is
a Nation?,” carries out an empirical verification of the extent of
the diffusion of “national consciousness” to the masses in Europe,
the cradle of modern nationalism. Based on this criterion, he
concludes that a number of putative nations in Europe have yet to
achieve nationhood.7 On the other hand, we may ask whether it is
a case of searching, in vain, for the Holy Grail. In their well-known
(though now dated) five-country 1950s survey on civic culture,
 Social Construction of Nation 455

Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba note that a rational recognition

of the importance of national politics and the perception of its
influence in a localized context and in daily lives is uneven among
the population. Even in the United States, where participation
in local communities was widely acknowledged as commendable,
active participation was “far from the most significant activity to
most people.” “It is not what most people do in their spare time,
nor is it the major source of satisfaction, joy, and excitement.”8
After all, engagement in political actions or following national
politics is only a small part of most ordinary citizens’ lives, even
in nation-states that are considered as operating in the “archetyp-
ical democratic systems” such as the United States or Western
European countries.
A glaring example of disjuncture between the ideal and
the real is the widespread belief that a culturally homogeneous
population is considered as a more stable and viable nation.9
This is notwithstanding the fact that culturally and linguistically
homogeneous nation-states constitute less than 10 percent of
the member-states of the United Nations.10 This belief lends
legitimacy to many state-initiated homogenizing projects in the
name of “nation-building.” These endeavors more often than not
became the source of interethnic conflicts rather than contribut-
ing to their alleviation.
This frequent dissonance from reality of the normative pre-
scriptions of the institutions of nation-states may be explained by
understanding the formation of nation-states in the context as
conforming to conventional scripts of a “world culture”11 that “au-
thorize and fashion” nation-states.12 Meyer et al. note the endemic
nature of this phenomenon of “decoupling” as nation-states adopt
various features of the exogenous cultural construction of the
nation-state model.13
In philosophical discourses, nation is invested with a moral
force as the “new and sovereign subject of history” tasked to fulfill
its historical destiny. Nations are conceived as historical actors
capable of purposeful and conscious action. Many students of
nationalism such as Benedict Anderson and Anthony Smith ask
what nationalism is that it can demand such extraordinary and
massive sacrifices and commitments from its members, including
dying for the nation. While nationalism no doubt stirs up passion
and obsession, studies of military organizations of armies debunk
456 H. Ting

the simplistic myth of the overpowering effects of nationalism and

national identity in engendering among individuals the corporate
nature of a group. The findings of Edward Shils on the conduct,
outlook, and attitudes of soldiers from three different countries
reveal that the power of patriotism alone is far from an adequate
or even pertinent explanation of the commitment of the soldiers
to fight the war. For the German army, he notes that even though
there were the hardcore, convinced Nazi military officers with a
strong ideological bent, there were also the non-Nazi, apolitical
officers and sergeants, who elicited their junior officers’ loyalty
through paternal, protective, personal concerns.14 American sol-
diers were “largely apolitical” and “fought out of a general sense
of obligation, comradely solidarity and the need to demonstrate
manliness.”15 The motivation in combat of Soviet solders “drew
relatively little sustenance from any attachment to the central
political and ideological symbols of the society in which they
lived,” “or even intense patriotism.”16 He concludes:

The military studies revealed that participation in the central value system
was very unequal in intensity and continuity, and that a large social
organization could maintain a high degree of effectiveness (integration)
with only a modicum of attachment to its value system.17

This means that we need to go beyond attributing “the power

of nationalism” to some primordial attachments and must attempt
to account for the phenomenon as a research question. In effect,
there has been an emerging debate that raises the issue of what
constitute “group-ness.”18 Scholars studying collective identity and
actions note the complexity involved in rendering a coherent
understanding of the identity of participants engaged in collective
action.19 Craig Calhoun notes that to offer a coherent under-
standing of who participants in a collective action are is in fact
a difficult interpretive problem as there are “ambiguities inherent
in the relationship between the singularity of a personal identity
and the multiplicity of social identities that may be borne by a
person.”20 Which identity of the person was determinant or the
most compelling in his participation in a collective action? Was
it the same for all his compatriots? These discussions on identity
issues during collective actions alert us to the theoretical fragility
of envisioning groups, as a matter of fact, as enduring components
of social structure and assuming a priori their group identity.
 Social Construction of Nation 457

Reconciling Contrastive Perspectives of National Identity

Our attempts at demystifying some issues pertaining to the onto-

logical nature of the “nation” provide us with a useful backdrop
to examine selected, contrastive ways different scholars construct
their conceptual framework in their study of national identity.
In her studies of five Western countries, Liah Greenfeld21
applies a very restrictive, subjectivist definition of what constitutes
an identity and hence a national identity. According to Greenfeld,
identity as self-perception “either exists or does not” and cannot
be asleep and then be awakened.”22 She treats identity as self-
definition that “defines a person’s position in his or her social
world” and “carries within itself expectations from the person and
from different classes of others in the person’s surroundings, and
thus orients his or her action.” She believes that, while people’s
essence has been defined by different identities in history and
in different societies such as religion, estate, or caste, it is the
national identity that defines the people’s essence in the modern
world and, hence, is “the most powerful.”23
I believe that the assumption by Greenfeld of the widespread
nature of national consciousness in the population and in par-
ticular the compelling nature of national identity on individuals’
behavior is an overstatement.24 Greenfeld does not look into the
linkage between the existence of a collective social category and
what Verdery calls “the problem of national subjectivities—in the
plural.”25 Her conception also overlooks the potentially conflict-
ual nature of the various components of individual identity that
is always multidimensional and situationally contextualized even
though she professes to believe in the nondeterminist nature
of human agency.26 It is here that the earlier discussion on
the problematic nature of “group-ness” becomes all the more
pertinent.
Anthony Smith, on the contrary, defines the fundamental
features of national identity in the following terms:

1. An historic territory or homeland;

2. Common myths and historical memories;
3. A common, mass public culture;
4. Common legal rights and duties for all members;
5. A common economy with territorial mobility for members.27
458 H. Ting

In this sense, Smith stresses the “structural” aspects of na-

tional identity.28 Unlike Greenfeld, Smith holds that there are
objective characteristics constitutive of a national identity inde-
pendent of individual consciousness. Smith, a prolific scholar
of nationalism, criticizes certain postmodernist approaches to
nationalism, such as that of Homi Bhabha, for suggesting that
“nations exist only in the narratives of their purveyors.” Un-
derstanding “nation” as a substantive entity,29 Smith counters
that one certainly cannot dispute the reality that “nations exist
outside the discourse and artefacts that represent them to an
audience.”30 Citing Adrian Hastings,31 he emphasizes that “it
could never be a matter of groundless imagining—rather a growth
in realization of, and preoccupation with, certain important
shared characteristics.”32 The “cultural and social foundations”
of the nation, for him, derive from the preexistence of ethnie, a
cultural community sharing myths, historical memories, values,
and symbols.
I agree with Smith on the existence of an “objective reality”
of national identity.33 My particular difficulty with his definition
is its paucity as a heuristic concept for the analysis of the situa-
tions in relatively young nation-states that obtained their political
independence during the second half of the twentieth century.
The proposed ideal-type of national identity based on features of
mature, Western nation-states reflects the typical conception of
the nation based on a Master narrative derived from the official
version of national identity. His definition may be characterized
as a “prescriptive” definition of national identity. By offering a
template as to what constitutes an “ideal” national identity, it
unintentionally sets a reference as to what a conventional national
identity “should” be. It also unwittingly encourages a teleological
rereading of history to understand the existing nation-state as the
fulfillment of a “national destiny” of a people.34 More importantly,
there is a lack of problematization of the concept as an analytical
framework in examining the reality of national identity in differ-
ent settings of nation-states as well as the dynamics involved in
maintaining it.35
How does an individual “become national?”36 The domi-
nant academic treatment of the subject is what Rogers Brubaker
calls “developmentalist,” which implies studying nationhood and
nationalism by tracing “the long-term political, economic, and
 Social Construction of Nation 459

cultural changes” in search for “generalized structural or cul-

tural explanations” for the emergence of nationalism and
nationhood.37 It is a perspective that sees nationhood as some-
thing that develops over time. Seeing individual consciousness as
a product of the progressive realization of the “objective” reality
outside the discursive realm, Smith and Hastings are representa-
tive of this established generation of scholarship.
On the other hand, Greenfeld who adopts a Weberian per-
spective of seeing “social reality as essentially symbolic,” and “so-
cial action as meaningfully oriented action”38 perceive the process
in a diametrically opposite way. She presumes that the presence of
national institutional practices and social structures is necessarily
indicative of the materialization or objectification of the national
identity shared by those who participate in it.
Greenfeld’s presumption may only be true for a committee
drafting a national constitution or the independence leaders
who formulated national ideology or established new institutions
and contemporary social actors who were aware of the process.
In effect, in terms of the transmission of such a conception of
nationhood to the putative “nation,” the attainment of political
independence marks the beginning of such a challenge, rather
than its accomplishment. Even the translation of the principle
of such institutions and legal framework into operation by the
restrained group of bureaucrats is not always evident or smooth
sailing.
On the other hand, treating the phenomena of national
identity solely at the structural and institutionalized level would
leave no room for understanding the dialogic process of trans-
mission and incorporation of a collective identity by individuals
and the dynamics of their agency and autonomy. The impact
of historical structures on the population is never automatic for
various reasons including the uneven distribution of material and
symbolic resources among different social groups, the different
social relations and perspectives generated from within and with-
out of these groups. Therefore, it is relevant to look at how
individual subjectivity is shaped in the context of a particular
institutional structure and other social events.
As well said by Dorothy Holland and Jean Lave, “history in
institutional structures and history in person are never simple
equivalents.”39 Similarly, Anthony Cohen criticizes “recent studies
460 H. Ting

of nationalist ritual” for failing to “distinguish adequately between

the intentions of their producers and the readings made of them
by their audiences.”40 Cohen advocates the importance of under-
standing “how individuals perceive their selves and, therefore, to
how they perceive their nations” so that we may be “alert to the
difference between the regime’s representations of the nation and
individuals’ interpretations of those representations.”41
The macrolevel narratives of the nation, often comprehen-
sive and authoritative, do not necessarily accurately and uniformly
reflect the nation-views of the population. The “structural” aspects
of national identity as listed by Smith no doubt contribute to the
shaping of the collective psyche of the population, albeit unevenly
and appreciated differently by the various sections of the popu-
lation, depending on their social position, ethnic affiliation, age
group, personal experience, etc. The issue at stake, as articulated
by Cohen who problematized consciousness, is that “we devised
systems for constructing other people’s consciousness, without
enquiring too closely into their veracity.”42
There is a third approach in characterizing national identity
that is more attentive to the dialectical and contested nature of
the social process of the constitution of national identity.
Prasenjit Duara,43 for instance, argues that national identity is
best seen as a relational identity. He holds that other forms of col-
lective or historical identification can always be used subversively
as an alternative vision of a nation against the official version of
national identity. Hence if we are careful to avoid privileging the
dominant narrative of the nation as representative of the perspec-
tive of the whole population, nationalism becomes “the site where
very different views of the nation contest and negotiate with each
other.”44 He suggests that we may speak of different “nation-views”
as we do “world-views.”45 Duara takes a “middle path” between
Greenfeld and Smith concerning the subjective versus objective
nature of national identity. While paying attention to the role of
discourse and representation in the construction of subjectivities,
he also notes the importance of objective, collective resources
such as historical and popular representations of community and
cultural practices as the basis of symbolic contestations.
These three very different, even contradictory approaches to
studying national identity as discussed above may be reconciled
critically as complementary dimensions of a coherent theoretical
 Social Construction of Nation 461

perspective. In my attempt to do so in this article, the concept of

“figured world” developed by Holland et al.46 is of fundamental
importance.
With a growing number of scholars,47 I feel that it would be
more helpful to understand the notion of “nation” as existing
essentially in the symbolic realm, as a mental construct. This
notion also finds echoes in the famous statement of Ernst Gellner
who states that “it is the nationalism which engenders nations, and
not the other way round.”48 In the same light, Calhoun explains
that nations exist

only when their members understand themselves through the discursive

framework of national identity, and they are commonly forged in the
struggle carried out by some members of the nation-in-the-making to get
others to recognize its genuine nation-ness and grant it autonomy or other
rights. The crucial thing to grasp here is that nations exist only within the
context of nationalism.49

While in full agreement with Calhoun, I believe that it is

pertinent to also bear in mind that the discursive framework of
national identity is in itself embedded in the globalized discourse
on nation-state.50

Mental Representation as Figured World

Holland et al. define “figured world” as a particular socially

produced, culturally constructed system of apprehension in which
one necessarily engages as one participates in social activities
or interacts with others.51 Also called figurative, narrativized, or
dramatized worlds,52 these usually consist of generic figures and
acts and stereotypical schemas or taken-for-granted sequences of
events. Figured worlds (for example, academia, religious belief
systems, the institution of the judiciary, and, in our case, the
system of nation-states) provide the contexts for our activities and
are sites of identity-production as we position ourselves according
to the configuration of social organization of those worlds. They
are “frames of meaning in which interpretations of human actions
are negotiated.”53 Socially instanced and located in time and
space, these “collective ‘as-if’” worlds, for Holland et al. are
sociohistoric and hence not based on arbitrary imaginations.54
462 H. Ting

The concept captures the importance of a shared social

understanding in the functioning of collective or institutional life.
Many of our actions cannot be understood without the knowledge
of the social meanings attached to them. For instance, the fact that
some women spend a fortune or endure stringent diets in order
to look attractive to the opposite sex can only be comprehended
through their conception of gender relations. The generally
incomprehensible acts of suicide bombers can only be understood
by entering into the imaginary realm propagated by the terrorist
cells. Many of the human activities in which considerable enthusi-
asm and energy are invested have an imagined component. Reli-
gious faith has been known to have motivated its believers to en-
gage in arduous efforts of self-sacrifice and restrain. A soldier who
willingly sacrificed his life on a battlefield may have understood
his action as a patriotic act. A Malay peasant who rendered his
service to the sultan in a Malay state under the traditional corvée
system did so based on a particular understanding of the nature
of relationship between a ruler and his subjects. Hence people’s
agency and identities are also anchored in these “imagined
worlds.” Understood in this sense, all of us live in such socially de-
fined worlds and understand ourselves in relations to these virtual
worlds.
The original work of Michael Billig55 on “banal nationalism,”
which analyzes discourses as articulated in British newspapers or
by American philosophers and politicians, illustrates how the par-
ticular way of thinking “as a nation” can be acquired imperceptibly
through banal acts such as reading newspapers, reading literature,
or listening to speeches of politicians. Depending on the degree
of engagement of an individual, motivations and deep emotions
can be engendered during his or her participation in a figured
world.
In this imagined world, specific objects, events, or persons
may be assigned as symbols with new meanings beyond their
everyday function. Habitual use of these collectively developed
signs and symbols enables them to be entrenched in our ev-
eryday life and become part of our cultural world. Quite often
and especially in relation to the structure of power, they may
be internalized by the individual participants through recurrent
institutional operation and through interactions. These symbols
become the mediating devices for us to switch effortlessly into
 Social Construction of Nation 463

the premises of the particular figured world and make possible

the functioning of human institutions. These symbols become
what are called “cultural artefacts,” as “psychological tools” in the
mediation of human actions and the construction of a specific
identity.56
For the purposes of this article, I am interested in the figured
world of nationhood or nationalism. The idea of the sovereignty
of the people, equality of citizens in a nation, and democratic
institutions has grown out of a long, particular historical devel-
opment in Europe and has since given birth to the contem-
porary globalized system of nation-states. The modern political
principles of nationhood, nationality, and citizenship as the basis
of legitimization of political autonomy and self-determination
need to be understood within this realm of the specific figured
world of nationalism. The meaning attributed to the raising of an
American flag on the moon has to be apprehended within the
symbolic realm of nationhood and the meaning attached to flags.
As remarked by Eric Hobsbawm, if an extraterrestrial historian
landed on our planet, the modern institution of nation-states
would not be understood as something evident based on common
sense, despite its importance over the last two centuries of the
human history on planet Earth.57
Grounded in the engagement with this figured world of
nationalism, waves of nationalist movements of decolonization
were engendered from the eighteenth century onwards. The ac-
tivities, discourses, and emotions generated during the historical
development of a nation-state subsequently become part and
parcel of the figured world of nationhood of the country. Hence,
despite bathing in a “world culture” in reference to a common
reservoir of doctrines and institutional prototypes of nation-states,
the imaginary realm of nationhood of each nation-state is peo-
pled by concrete historical personalities, meanings articulated by
means of narratives, symbols, and events, punctuated with spe-
cific perspectives and political orientation in the interpretation
of the significance of particular act or events. These historical
characters and events provide the artefacts to form some sort
of “standard plot,” assigned roles or taken-for-granted sequences
of events prescribed with specific significance. It is against this
background of meanings that ongoing happenings and events are
interpreted.
464 H. Ting

In the daily lives of ordinary citizens, it is usually when they

are engaged in activities involving agents of state institutions, or
reading about national politics, that they encounter the figured
world of nationhood. It is in the context of carrying out related so-
cially constructed activities that they internalize, appropriate and
reproduce the particular figured world. Through the appropri-
ation, objectification, and communication of this figured world,
the participants reproduce, form and reform this “structure of
meaning”—termed “nation-views”—in their everyday lives. This
nation-view is formed on the basis of the interpretation of past
personal social exposure and experiences and is reproduced or
readjusted in the course of the everyday activities on the basis of
expectations of how particular events will unfold. This dialogic
process of appropriation, improvisation, and reproduction gener-
ates a multiplicity and fragmentation of interpretation depending
on the individual background, experiences, and social position of
the participants as well as the “communities of practice” in which
activities are carried out. In the process of this individualization,
there is a degree of uncertainty in the interpretation of action
encountered in an interactive context during the day-to-day activ-
ities.
At the individual level, there is a multiplicity of facets
of selves grounded in different “figured worlds” as revealed
through the stream of everyday life we are engaged in.
The figured world of nationhood is only one among many
other figured worlds that ordinary citizens encounter in their
daily lives. In all likelihood, it may not even be the most
salient figured world they engage in, except for those work-
ing in specific professions, that entails following closely na-
tional affairs, such as politicians or journalists covering political
news.
Our engagement with these different levels of social iden-
tities of oneself, which Holland et al. calls “sites of the self,”58
are not static and are capable of evolving. The awareness of the
plurality of the “sites of the self” or the social realm in which
different levels of self may be fashioned through discourses and
practices is an important aspect to look into in the constitution
of national identity. While these various sites of the self may
be complementary, they may also generate dynamics of conflict
within oneself.
 Social Construction of Nation 465

Identity Formation, Agency and Structure: Social Practices as the

Integrative Factor

The (re)production of a particular figured world takes place

through social activity. The term “activity” is understood here as
“a historical, socially and culturally constructed form of social (in-
ter)action” and serves as the link between individual and social en-
vironment (or structure for that matter).59 Instead of conceiving
people as responding passively to their cultural environment, it is
argued that people always engage actively with their sociocultural
environment. The encounter with an environmental stimulus is
arguably always mediated by the activity. The “something” that
people are doing is always a “historical, collectively defined,
socially produced activity,” within a “meaningful intent toward
their surroundings,” such as within a specific figured world.60
In other words, by engaging oneself in a specific activity, which
usually takes place within a specific social understanding or a
particular figured world, one is drawn into the related processes
or traditions of apprehension. The process of self-identification
and agency happens within these collectively formed social en-
counters, socially instanced and located in times and places.
To say it differently, our identity as social personalities is
acquired from society through socialization and interaction with
others in the particular cultural context of a symbolic world.61
This way, our figured worlds are peopled with identifiable persons
and familiar social types and animated with human voice and
tone. In a similar light, the local process of reproduction of
national identity is by a meaningful appropriation and adoption
of the “nation” based on concrete life experiences, “without
abandoning local interests, a local sense of place, or a local
identity.”62
Therefore, social practice is the medium through which
the symbolic world of nationhood is reenacted: either rou-
tinely validated or subverted by bureaucrats, or from time to
time, contested or affirmed by “social entrepreneurs” based on
their particular understanding of nation-views. At the individ-
ual level, our “nation-views” and identification with the nation
(or positioning within the figured world of nationhood) are
formed through the complex interaction of interpersonal, struc-
tural, and self-appropriation dynamics, through the mediation of
466 H. Ting

(often dominant) discourses and social practices or collective

activities. The significance (indeed the existence) of cultural
worlds in our lives as well as nation-views for that matter, does not
derive from holding them “in mind” as some whole image (we
may or may not do this), but from recreating them through work
and in interactions with others.63
The construction of identity in the context of the reproduc-
tion of a specific figured world is an intersubjective and reflexive
process. In his attempt to explain the seemingly irrational, rad-
ical actions of some participants in the Chinese student protest
movement of 1989, Calhoun suggests that “participation in a
course of action has over time committed one to an identity
that would be irretrievably violated by pulling back from the
risk.”64 Understanding identity as a “relatively stable construction
in an ongoing process of social activity,”65 Calhoun notes that
the identity of the participants is actually being constituted in the
course of participation in collective action. He concludes that

We are not just influenced by social relationships during a socialization

process and then left fully formed. We have our identity only within such
relationship. Not only is life always social, living is always a matter of action,
not of statistically possessing an identity or set of attitudes prior to action.
What one does defines who one is, both for others and especially for
oneself. Risky and unusual collective action places one’s identity on the
line in an especially powerful way.66

This perspective of Calhoun on identity formation and

agency corresponds with that of Holland et al. who argue that
the identification or emotional involvement of an individual with
a particular figured world develops in the course of acquiring
a certain degree of competence and becoming an actor in that
world. As the individual’s expertise to act in that cultural world
increases, he or she develops a more engaging interpretation
of self in that world, and his/her cultural interpretation of the
issue becomes more salient and compelling.67 While Calhoun
gains his insights from his observation of the more dramatic
action of demonstration by the Chinese students at Tiananmen
Square, Holland et al. derive their findings from more mundane,
quotidian activities.
 Social Construction of Nation 467

The implication is that the development of identity does not

happen as something expected, habitual, or taken for granted by
virtue of belonging to some form of abstracted collectivity. The
functioning of figured worlds is dependent on the interaction
and intersubjectivity for perpetuation. For this reason, I postulate
that the engagement of citizens in the officially defined figured
world of national identity may range from complete ignorance
at one extreme to uneven and fragmented to full immersion on
the other end, depending on the person’s social exposure and
knowledge. As observed by Holland et al. “some figured worlds
we may never enter because of our social position or rank; some
we may deny to others; some we may simply miss by contingency;
some we may learn fully.”68

Social Field: Situating Agency in the (Re)production

of Figured World

Given the objective existence of a figured world, any significant

modifications are only possible on a collective scale. This brings us
to an important consideration on how the significance of particu-
lar social practices or activities is determined by structural factors.
The sociopolitical impacts of citizens’ action vary depending on
their social position and the arena in which the activity takes
place. Thomas Eriksen remarks that “Ultimately it is true that only
individuals are capable of action, but some are more powerful
than others because they act on a larger scale.”69 Hence in order
to assess the extent of impact of an action on the “authoritative”
figured world of nationhood, agency has to be located in its
particular social space and context, such as in its “social fields,” to
use the term suggested by Eriksen.70 He also notes that individuals
may act in different capacities or social status when moving from
one field to another. Each individual may possess a range of social
statuses or may be a member of a variety of social categories of
collectivities. Depending on the nature of the social field he or
she participates in, appropriate aspects of his/her social positions
may be invoked to enhance the legitimacy and efficaciousness of
his/her action.71
Eriksen identifies two levels of social fields in his work:
local fields72 and nationwide fields.73 Social fields situated at the
local level are based on face-to-face interaction with individuals
468 H. Ting

perceived as the central acting unit. In nationwide fields,

“anonymity and aggregated systemic properties are central
features.”74 Also relevant to our purpose here is the less percepti-
ble influence of the global field.

National Identity—The Glocalization of Progress and Modernity

As we have noted, constitutive elements in the figured world

of nationhood trace their origins to a world system of nation-
states. The establishment of the United Nations has provided a
mechanism and a system to affirm and to confirm the identity
of an individual nation-state. More than that, nation-states are
inscribed in a world cultural order, which sustains the legitimacy
of the state to formulate its project of “modernization” in pur-
suit of conventionally defined “progress.” State dominance over
properly incorporated territory and its authority to incorporate
its populations are justified in the name of what is called national
sovereignty.
Drawing their inspiration from Western established nation,
newly independent nation-states tend to follow a stylized model
for the cultural construction of national identity, using concepts
such as “tradition,” “national intellectual culture,” as well as
means such as museums, even tourism.75 In the figured world of
nationhood or nationalism, ancestral antiquity lends credential
to the said nation, and legitimacy to the nationalists’ claims for
its self-determination, much as the whole endeavor is cast in the
aspiration to attain “modernity” for the putative “nation.” Hence
implementing national policies to preserve and to reproduce
the uniqueness of national identity is sanctioned by this world
cultural order. This seemingly contradictory mutual implication
of particularism and universalism is captured aptly by Roland
Robertson’s term “glocalization.”76
On another front, agents of the world polity have also
progressively established global norms and moral references in-
cluding the notions of human rights and gender equality that set
some limits to the authority of the state over its citizens. Legal
instruments such as international conventions and international
institutions such as the United Nations Commission on Human
Rights and the International Criminal Court are means, imperfect
though they are, seeking to circumscribe state actions to be
 Social Construction of Nation 469

accountable to the so-called universal norms. More importantly,

domestic actors of civil society or marginalized groups can also
tap into specific nation-related ideals and principles77 espoused
in this “world culture” to substantiate their cause as citizens.
More often than not, the influence of world polity on the
nation-state is exerted in the form of disinterested “rational-
ized others.”78 Advice and consultation with professionals and
scientists affiliated to world social organizations are regularly
sought or imparted that could exert nonnegligible influence on
the perspective of state elites. The authority of rationalized and
universalistic knowledge in the name of science is more influen-
tial than “scientists as an interest group.”79 When encountering
uncharted water on issues pertaining to national institutional
practices, examples of other nation-states are often studied and
selectively emulated as best-practice models.
Lastly, forces of globalization and the way the nation-states
position themselves in the international division of labor may also
pose as another counterforce in influencing subsequent policy
modifications or adaptation. International events, ideas propa-
gated by global movement such as Islamism or “long-distance
nationalism” may also have tangible effects on the subjectivities
of domestic political elites and social actors.

Bureaucratic Practices—Engendering an Institutionalized80

Form of Nationhood

As noted previously, though figured worlds are always subject

to personal interpretation and individuation of appropriation,
they are generally carried out in the context of power relations,
the realm that concerns matters such as power, status, relative
privilege, and their negotiation. The figured world of nationhood
in particular is related to the larger, institutionalized structures of
power. Its propagation and reproduction is subject to the context
of the social “structure of power” in the sense of how social rela-
tions among the participants of different social status and influ-
ence are being played out. Differentiated by power relations and
mediated by state institutions such as the schooling system and
department of curriculum development, discourses and practices
engendering a sense of nationhood such as “national history” and
civic lessons of citizenship are imparted on adolescent students
470 H. Ting

as part of the nation-building project. Through the singing of

the national anthem during weekly assembly in schools, students
internalize the understanding of their belonging to a larger
political community called the nation.
Just as activities based on specific understanding of a par-
ticular figured world “make it happen,” through bureaucratic
practices “the political fiction of the nation becomes momentarily
yet powerfully realized in practice.”81 The manner in which mem-
bers of the state apparatus administer, regulate and discipline
their citizens according to a normative set of principles is a
social process that contributes to the reification of a particular
conception of nation among their interlocutors as real. It is also
linked to what are conventionally called nation-building projects
implemented by the particular nation-state. The routinized way the
bureaucracy functions as well as the pervasive social dynamics
generated by the state administration and implementation of
government policies constitutes an influential part of the insti-
tutionalizing social process. In order to account for this social
process of reification, Brubaker asks, “[H]ow is nationhood as
a political and cultural form institutionalized within and among
states? How does nation work as practical category, as classificatory
scheme, as cognitive frame? What makes the use of that category
by or against states more or less resonant or effective?”82 Brubaker
sees the world system of nation-states as a system whereby “nation
is widely, if unevenly, available and resonant as a category of social
vision and division.”83
Nation-states differ in the way they “nation-alize” the political
space. Through different models of national integration based
on their specific understanding of what constitutes the ideals
and uniqueness of their respective nationhood, they manage
and organize their populations accordingly. Benedict Anderson
reminds us that, “[national] communities are to be distinguished,
not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they
are imagined.”84 One of the defining features of the style of
nationhood is the way the “ethnic question” is articulated or
handled in a nation-state.85
Depending on its understanding of the nature of nationhood
or “national way” of going about the issue of national integration,
the state may formulate policies that administer its population
following specific parameters. The Barthian understanding of
 Social Construction of Nation 471

ethnicity as the “social organization of culture difference”86 may

well be reinforced, or given added significance, depending on
the manner in which state institutions deal with the issue of
race and ethnicity. The social dynamics that structure interethnic
interaction allowing for the persistence of cultural differences
and maintenance of ethnic boundaries may or may not have
a direct link to state policies. However, in cases where state
agents intervene as a matter of policy in favor of one group
at the expense of another based on ascriptive criteria alone,
they contribute to the heightening of the social significance of
ethnicity and the strengthening of ethnic boundaries. Rather
than educating the population to perceive social reality based
on mutually agreeable universalistic values and hence attenuating
ethnic conflicts, ethnicity is given an added social function of
attributing advantage/disadvantage in terms of access to state-
distributed resources. This way, the state by its own mode of
operation reifies ethnicity and ethnic interests. Such institution-
alized practice evidently sets the social interests of one ethnic
group against the others and generates ethnic-based grievances,
rendering the state vulnerable to social conflicts clothed in ethnic
terms. Moreover, additional demands of a particular social group
are susceptible to be articulated in terms of “ethnic demands”
rather than based on the “nonpartisan” principles of equality and
social justice. When such demands are acceded to, the decision
is perceived in zero-sum terms as favoring one group at the
expense of another and not evaluated based on universally agreed
normative values. Such a mode of national (dis)integration is
self-defeating from the point of view of fostering national unity
and “nation”-building.
As noted by a number of scholars, the capacity of the states
to impose their version of social order differs from one country
to another. This variation of capacity may also exist over time
and between ruling regimes within the same country.87 Katherine
Verdery notes that the impact of state efforts in the regulation of
the population varies “partly as a function of the power held by
political elites and the resistances they encounter.”88 Responses
to state intervention may also take the form of a more com-
plex, multipolar dialectical dynamic, with groups of social actors
positioning themselves differently in the face of the hegemonic
discourse.89
472 H. Ting

National Identity as an “Eventful”90 Historical Process

As we have seen in the previous section, the normative scheme

as articulated in the official ideological discourse constitutes
part and parcel of the figured world of national identity. It is
inscribed as the Geertzian “cultural context” or overall “struc-
tures of signification” within which the sociopolitical contests
are played out. It is akin to the proposal of Kaplan and Kelly
to see hegemony as operating at the level of “grammars” to
a language through official codifications and prescriptions and
routinization of power structure.91 However, the final outcome
of state policies may not be the unilateral execution of concrete
measures by the bureaucracy. Social groups concerned are bound
to adapt their strategies vis-à-vis the bureaucracy accordingly. Ong
Aihwa describes how the differential agency of immigrants of
different origins in the United States were unwittingly shaped by
the regulatory regimes of state agencies and civil society and me-
diated by diffused normative scheme of racial categorization and
economic worth.92 Hence while the ruling ideology and policy
intentions may set the agenda in a particular way, the ultimate
social consequences depend also on the process of dialectical
interaction and negotiation between the civil society and the
state.
“Figured worlds happen, as social process and in historical
time,” as well said by Holland et al.93 If we simply take the
institutionalized nationhood as the sole reference for national
identity, then we are bound to underestimate the contested nature
of the issue, to omit alternative perspectives of marginalized social
groups, and to be unable to capture the contingent sociohistorical
process through which the version of the victors emerged. Assert-
ing that “nationalism is rarely the nationalism of the nation,” Duara
complains that “[h]istorians have been generally concerned with
the process whereby national identities are formed and evolve
and have neglected to see that it is the same process whereby
other identifications and alternative, often incipient, narratives of
the nation are repressed and obscured.”94 By paying attention to
the historical process, we can explore the dialectical relationship
between the dominant national form of identification and the
repressed and obscured ones. This relationship between the dom-
inant understanding of nationhood and its internal Other, which
 Social Construction of Nation 473

Stuart Hall would call the dialogic construction of difference, is

integral to the dynamics of identity formation.
Stuart Hall suggests conceptualizing identity as a process of
identification: “something that happens over time, that is never ab-
solutely stable, that is subject to the play of history and the play of
difference.”95 He argues that identification does not happen once
and for all, just as history changes our conception of ourselves. In
addition, identity is partly “the relationship between you and the
Other,” hence the construction of difference, which is an unfinished
process that happens over time.96 While Hall is referring to
individual identity, it corresponds with Duara’s conceptualization
of national identity as sites of contests of different ideas of national
forms mentioned earlier.97
Citing Franz Fanon’s account in his book, Black Skin, White
Masks, of a white child saying to her mother, “Look Momma, a
Black man,” Hall notes that Fanon mentions that he was “fixed in
that gaze.”98 This resonates with what Brubaker calls “an eventful
approach to nationness.” Brubaker proposes to think of “nation-
ness as event,” as something that suddenly crystallizes, something
that happens, and as “a contingent, conjuncturally fluctuating, and
precarious frame of vision and basis for individual and collective
action.”99 He gives the experience of a Croatian writer Slavenka
Drakulic, who describes her experience as being “overcome by
nationhood,” and “pinned to the wall of nationhood,” against
her will.100 In the life of a “nation,” there are indeed poignant
or historic moments whereby the people are suddenly awakened
to a specific, at times unexpected, perception of the reality of the
“nation”; be it tragic, emotionally uplifting or even divisive.
Hence significant historical events occurring in social fields
at the national level could also implicate the figured world of
nationhood, and arguably even more decisively, as it involves
the unfolding of one important aspect of the figured world, the
history of the putative nation.
Defining “event” as “that relatively rare subclass of happen-
ings that significantly transform structures,” William H. Sewell,
Jr.101 proposes to see events as “capable of changing not only
the balance of causal forces operating but the very logic by
which consequences follow from occurrences or circumstances.”
In this way, “events bring about historical changes in part by
transforming the very cultural categories that shape and constrain
474 H. Ting

human action.”102 Indeed, particular happenings may spark off

far-reaching sociopolitical processes that subsequently modify the
mode of conception of nationhood. There are historical events
that mark profoundly the psyche of the collective memory of
the population as a “nation” and shape in a determinant way its
subsequent historical course. From this point of view, historical
events as a process may lead to the mutation of institutional
expression of nationhood.
An event may have impacts both on social structure as well
as individual subjectivity, depending on its implications on social
actors operating at different levels. An event may be retrospec-
tively appropriated as an “artefact” to institute and reproduce
structures. Social structures may be transformed by events that
lead to the constitution or empowerment of new social actors, or
the reempowerment of existing groups in new ways.103 Significant
events could also serve as the justification for governing elites to
introduce controversial policy changes which erode the existing
institutionalized form of nationhood. These events become the
artefacts in the figured world of nationhood for the construction
of new discursive resources and mobilization of legitimacy for the
new policy formulated by the governing elites. Nevertheless, in
other situations, events may also serve as the discursive tools for
the construction of identity and mediation of collective action of
a particular group of social actors, as materials for representations
of historical memory. Calhoun notes how past heroic actions
of a historical personality provided Chinese student protesters
with one among other “scripts for action in the midst of rad-
ical struggle.”104 In this case, student leaders drew inspiration
from their cultural resources through a strong emphasis on
following commendable models, on archetypal images of “good”
identity.105
The affirmation of national identity at this level is manifested
in the form of group-based social contestations in the national
public arena. This is where realpolitik articulated by politicians
in nation-related idioms is dramatized, social movements fight
their causes, and unpredictable events that may have superficial
or far-reaching impacts on nationhood take place. Differentiat-
ing it from the institutionalized dimension is its nonroutinized,
conjunctural, contested, and fluid nature. This is the milieu of
action par excellence by the so-called “political entrepreneurs”106
 Social Construction of Nation 475

or community leaders who try to promote competing nation-of-

intent.107 They endeavor to invoke the nation-derived discourse to
win popular support and to gain mass adherence to their brand of
representation of nationhood, whether to secure electoral victory,
to exert political pressure aiming for the compliance of policy
makers, or to ward off counterclaims incompatible with theirs.

Conclusion

In his article, The Politics of Meaning , Clifford Geertz notes that

“One of the things that everyone knows but no one can quite
think how to demonstrate is that a country’s politics reflect the
design of its culture.”108 Elaborating on what he means by this
“culture” in the Indonesian political context, Geertz explains:

Culture, here, is not cults and customs, but the structures of meaning
through which men give shape to their experience; and politics is not
coups and constitutions, but one of the principal arenas in which such
structures publicly unfold. The two being thus reframed, determining the
connection between them becomes a practicable enterprise.109

Geertz’s “structures of meaning” correspond with the con-

cept of figured worlds of Holland et al., with the “figured world of
nationhood” as a particularly pertinent one. Through the study
of how this “structure of meaning” unfolds in politics, political
life is rendered intelligible “by seeing it, even at its most erratic, as
informed by a set of conceptions—ideals, hypotheses, obsessions,
judgments—derived from concerns which far transcend it.” For
Geertz, this particular set of national “cultural conceptions” exists
“in the concrete immediacy of partisan struggle” and “not in some
gauzy world of mental forms.”110 Nonetheless, our discussion
has illustrated clearly that both aspects are in reality mutually
constitutive. Social interaction and activities are always mediated
by some forms of sociocultural understanding. Viewed this way,
the “gauzy world of mental forms” of cultural conceptions would
have been transmitted or communicated through the activities of
“partisan struggle.” Hence through the framework of the figured
world of nationhood, we can understand “how it is that every
people gets the politics it imagines.”111
476 H. Ting

Notes

1. In a collective project of historical research into the formation of modern

nation-states in Western Europe, sociologist Charles Tilly explains that
they began with the intention “to analyse state-making and the formation
of nations interdependently.” Nevertheless, they subsequently abandoned
the “nation-building” theme and concentrated on the development of
states. One of the reasons given was that “(n)ation remains one of the
most puzzling and tendentious items in the political lexicon.” See Charles
Tilly, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” in Charles
Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 6.
2. Another sociologist, Anthony Giddens, in A Contemporary Critique of Histor-
ical Materialism. Volume II: The Nation-State and Violence (Cambridge, MA:
Polity Press, 1985), explicitly dissociated his definition of nation from “any
particular characterization of nationalism” such that “nation” as used by
him “only exists when a state has a unified administrative reach over the
territory over which its sovereignty is claimed” (pp.119–121). He made a
similar statement in A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. Volume
I: Power, Property and the State (London & Basingstoke, UK: The Macmillan
Press, 1981), p. 13.
3. David McCrone, The Sociology of Nationalism (New York: Routledge, 1998),
p. 7.
4. Craig Calhoun, Nationalism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press, 1997), p. 98.
5. Stuart Hall, for instance, in a chapter entitled “Ethnicity: Identity and
Difference,” in Geoff Eley & Ronald Grigor Suny (eds.), Becoming Na-
tional—A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), criticized the
notion that “a very narrow and exclusive conception of Englishness . . .
lies at the absolute center of the political project of Thatcherism” (p.
346). Similarly, Richard Jenkins in his book chapter entitled, “Different
Societies? Different Cultures? What are Human Collectivities?”, in Siniša
Malesevic & Mark Haugaard (eds.), Making Sense of Collectivity: Ethnicity,
Nationalism and Globalisation (London: Pluto Press, 2002), stressed the
historically evolving and less than definite boundary of the membership
of the Danish nation.
6. Katherine Verdery, “Whither ‘Nation’ and ‘Nationalism’?,” Daedalus, Vol.
122, No. 3 (1993), p. 37.
7. Walker Connor, “When is a Nation?”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 13, No.
1 (1990), p. 99.
8. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture—Political Attitudes
and Democracy in Five Nations (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company,
1965), p. 346.
9. For a historical account that reveals the “ahistorical” basis of envisioning
a culturally homogenous society as the only sociopolitically viable one,
cf. William H. McNeill, Polyethnicity and National Unity in World History
 Social Construction of Nation 477

(Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1985). In a similar light, Roland

Robertson in his book, Globalization—Social Theory and Global Culture (Lon-
don, Newbury Park, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1992), reflecting on
the deficiency of the main traditions of social theory to shed light on
the phenomenon of globalization as well as analyzing cultural differences
in society, observes how leading classical sociologists contributed towards
promoting such an idea that has become part of the authoritative “world
culture” regarding nation-states (pp. 108–114).
10. Anthony Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (Cambridge, MA:
Polity Press, 1995), p. 86.
11. The term is used by Frank J. Lechner and John Boli in their book,
World Culture—Origins and Consequences (Malden, UK: Blackwell Publishing,
2005). Except for some details, I am in agreement with the core arguments
of the authors on world culture, which is complementary with the concept
of “figured world” that I will elaborate on and use in this article.
12. For a concise elaboration of these ideas, refer to John W. Meyer, John Boli,
George M. Thomas, and Francisco O. Ramirez, “World Society and the
Nation-State,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 103, No. 1 (July 1997), pp.
144–181.
13. Ibid., pp. 154–156.
14. Edward Shils, “Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties,” The British
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1957), pp. 135–136.
15. Ibid., p. 138.
16. Ibid., p. 141.
17. Ibid.
18. For a recent discussion on the state of sociologists’ attempts in the
theorization of human collectivity, cf. Jenkins, pp.12–32.
19. Craig Calhoun, “The Problem of Identity in Collective Action,” in Joan Hu-
ber (ed.), Macro-Micro Linkages in Sociology (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Pub-
lications, 1991), p. 60; Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed—Nationhood
and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), p. 13.
20. Calhoun (1991), p. 59.
21. Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism—Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1993).
22. For Greenfeld, “An essential characteristic of any identity is that it is
necessarily the view the concerned actor has of himself or herself. It
therefore either exists or does not; it cannot be asleep and then be
awakened, as some sort of disease. It cannot be presumed on the basis
of any objective characteristics, however closely associated with it in other
cases. Identity is perception. If a particular identity does not mean anything
to the population in question, this population does not have this particular
identity” (p. 13).
23. Ibid., p. 20.
24. I am more convinced of the general relevance to all nation-states of the
following description by Edward Shils on the rather relaxed, attenuated,
478 H. Ting

and compromised attachment to the ideals of political beliefs of the people

in the presumably “mature” Western nation-states:

Man is much more concerned with what is near at hand, with what
is present and concrete than with what is remote and abstract. He is
more responsive on the whole to persons, to the status of those who
surround him and the justice which he sees in his own situation than
he is with the symbols of remote persons, with the total status system
in the society and with the global system of justice. Immediately
present authorities engage his mind more than remote ones. The
ordinary man is however not a complete idiot in the Greek sense. In
a dormant way, semi-conscious and peripheral, he too responds to
the central authorities and symbols of the society. From time to time,
as occasion requires, he comes more closely into contact with them;
his consciousness is opened to them at election time, in times of
national troubles, in great ceremonial occasions like the Coronation,
in the same way in which an “Easter and Christmas” communicant
enters into communion with divinity on these two great annual
occasions, at his wedding, at the christening of his children, on the
occasion of the death of a kinsman, a family member or a close
friend. For the rest of the time, the ultimate values of the society,
what is sacred to its members, are suspended amidst the distractions
of concrete tasks, which makes the values ambiguous and thus gives
freedom for individual innovation, creation, and adaptation. Shils,
pp. 130–131

25. Verdery, p. 40.

26. To be fair, Greenfeld acknowledges that “I am aware of ‘multiple conti-
nuities’ in every one of the nationalisms I studied. In each, there were
defeated traditions and roads not taken. I did not focus on them because
they were not taken” (p. 25, emphasis by author).
27. Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (London: Penguin Group, 1991), p. 14.
28. This is despite the professed intention of Smith to pay attention to
the more “subjective” factors, though he avoids the study of more
“ephemeral” aspects of identity such as “collective will, attitude, even
sentiment, which make up the day-to-day fabric of ethnic consciousness”
and turns to the more “permanent” cultural attributes of memory, value,
myth, and symbolism, which “are often recorded and immortalized in
the arts, languages, sciences and laws of the community,” Anthony D.
Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988),
p. 3.
29. Smith (1991), p. 14. In contrast, Greenfeld speaks about “nation” more in
terms of an idea: “National identity, . . . provides an organizing principle
applicable to different materials to which it then grants meaning, trans-
forming them thereby into elements of a specific identity” (pp. 13–14).
 Social Construction of Nation 479

30. Anthony D. Smith, “Theories of Nationalism—Alternative Models of Na-

tion Formation,” in Michael Leifer (ed.), Asian Nationalism (London:
Routledge, 2000), p. 9.
31. Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood (Cambridge, UK: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1997).
32. Smith (2000), p. 22.
33. By “objective,” I mean that the existence of the said reality is independent
of individual or subjective perception.
34. As Calhoun (1997) suggests, “The idea that each people has an ‘essential’
identity—internally unified and different from all others—is an important
thread in the history of nationalism. Such a notion can easily turn
oppressive, and indeed it figures in both ‘ethnic cleansing’ and the project
of encouraging ‘correct’ culture and behaviour among those who are
deemed parts of the nation. There is an important distinction between
webs of interpersonal solidarity and demands for oneness with broad
categories of ostensibly similar people” (p. 7).
35. Here I agree with Brubaker who pointed out that the problem with
scholars adopting a substantialist treatment of nation as real entities tend
to adopt “categories of practice as categories of analysis” (p. 15).
36. The term is borrowed from the title of a reader on nationalism edited
by Geof Eley and Ronald G. Suny, Becoming National (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996).
37. Brubaker, p. 19.
38. Greenfeld, p. 18, emphasis by author.
39. Jean Lave and Dorothy Holland (eds.), History in Person: Enduring Struggles,
Contentious Practice, Intimate Identities (Santa Fe, NM: School of American
Research Press & James Currey, 2001), p. 5.
40. Anthony P. Cohen, “Personal Nationalism: A Scottish View of Some Rites,
Rights, and Wrongs,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 23, No. 4 (1996), p. 804.
41. Ibid., pp. 803–804.
42. Anthony P. Cohen, “Boundaries of Consciousness, Consciousness of
Boundaries: Critical Questions for Anthropology,” in Hans Vermeulen and
Cora Govers (eds.), The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond “Ethnic Groups and
Boundaries” (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis Publishers, 1996a), p. 60.
43. Prasenjit Duara, “Historicizing National Identity, or Who Imagines What
and When,” in Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds.), Becoming Na-
tional—A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 150–177;
Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History From the Nation—Questioning Narratives of
Modern China (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).
44. Duara (1995), p. 152.
45. Ibid., p. 161.
46. Dorothy Holland, William Lachicotte Jr., Debra Skinner, and Carole Cain,
Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard
University Press, 2001).
47. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism (London & New York: Verso, 1996); Craig Calhoun,
“Nationalism and Ethnicity,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 19 (1993), pp.
480 H. Ting

211–239; Richard Handler, “Is ‘Identity’ a Useful Cross-Cultural Concept?,”

in John R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations—The Politics of National Identity
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 27–40; as well
as Verdery, Brubaker, and Jenkins. In effect, after the influential work
published by Anderson, it has come to be increasingly realized that all
notions of communities have an imagined component.
48. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (London: Basil Blackwell, 1983), p.
55.
49. Calhoun (1997), p. 99.
50. This does not imply that all nationalist discourses are constructed in the
same way, but that they may borrow ideas or lend political legitimacy from
the historically developed conventions on national self-determination.
Whether they like it or not, leaders of nation-states are obliged to grapple
with established norms and principles of the contemporary world system of
nation-states. Calling it glocalization, Roland Robertson examines this pro-
cess of the integration of globalized norms in the articulation of localized
or even particularistic perspective or identity in his article, “Glocalization:
Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity,” in Mike Featherstone, Scott
Lash, and Roland Robertson (eds.), Global Modernities (London: Sage
Publications, 1995), pp. 25–44.
51. Holland et al. refer a figured world to “a socially and culturally constructed
realm of interpretation in which particular characters and actors are rec-
ognized, significance is assigned to certain acts, and particular outcomes
are valued over others” (p. 52).
52. Ibid., p. 53.
53. Ibid., p. 271.
54. Ibid., pp. 49–52.
55. Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage Publications, 1995).
56. Holland et al., pp. 60–61.
57. Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780—Programme, Myth,
Reality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 1.
58. Holland et al., p. 28.
59. Ibid., p. 39.
60. Ibid., p. 39.
61. Abner Cohen, Two-Dimensional Man—An Essay on the Anthropology of Power
and Symbolism in Complex Society (Berkeley, CA: University of California,
1976), p. 41.
62. Cohen (1996a), p. 71.
63. Holland et al., p. 41.
64. Calhoun (1991), p. 61.
65. Ibid., pp. 52–53.
66. Ibid., p. 61.
67. Holland et al., Chapter 4 & 5.
68. Ibid., p. 41.
69. Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Common Denominators: Ethnicity, Nation-Building
and Compromise in Mauritius (New York: Berg, 1998), p. 30.
 Social Construction of Nation 481

70. Quoting Gronhaug, Eriksen conceptualizes social field as follows: “People

pursue tasks, and when they act and counter-act vis-à-vis each other,
the acts have intended, but eminently a multitude of unintended conse-
quences, chain-reactions, and repercussions. When series of such implica-
tions between events make up delineable implication-systems we can label
them ‘social fields’“ (pp. 29–30, emphases in original).
71. Ibid., pp. 30–31.
72. They include the household, the locality, and the working place.
73. Eriksen names the national economic system, the national political system,
and the state bureaucracy and nationwide communicational systems as
examples of nationwide fields.
74. Ibid., p. 44.
75. Meyer et al., p. 158.
76. Cf. footnote no. 49 for reference and further comments.
77. Meyer et al. call these nation-related ideals and principles “legitimacy
myths” (democracy, freedom, and equality) of the state actors, ibid., p. 160.
78. Ibid., p. 162.
79. Ibid., p. 166.
80. Institution is understood as “established and recognized ways of doing
things” after Jenkins (2002).
81. Brubaker, p. 16.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid., p. 21.
84. Anderson, p. 6.
85. Brackette F. Williams, “A Class Act: Anthropology and the Race to Nation
Across Ethnic Terrain,” Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 18 (1989), pp.
401–444.
86. Fredrik Barth, “Introduction,” in Fredrik Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and
Boundaries—The Social Organisation of Culture Difference (London: George
Allen & Unwin, 1969), pp. 9–38.
87. Cf., for example, Cohen (1996), pp. 802–815.
88. Verdery, p. 43.
89. Martha Kaplan and John D. Kelly, “Rethinking Resistance: Dialogics of
‘Disaffection’ in Colonial Fiji,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 21, No. 1 (1994),
pp. 123–151.
90. The term “eventful” is coined by William Sewell, Jr. and picked up by
Rogers Brubaker in their respective work to be discussed in this section.
91. Ibid., p. 127.
92. Aihwa Ong, “Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making—Immigrants Ne-
gotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States,” Current
Anthropology, Vol. 37, No. 5 (1996), pp. 737–762.
93. Holland et al., p. 55.
94. Duara (1995), p. 8, 15.
95. Hall, p. 344.
96. Ibid., p. 345.
97. I feel that this formulation of Duara that highlights the contentious nature
of different ideas of national forms is more edifying than the formulation
482 H. Ting

of Smith (1988) on the same dynamic, who talked about the “inherent
instability in the very concept of the nation, which appears to be driven . . .
back and forth between the two poles of ethnie and state which it seeks to
subsume and transcend” (p. 150).
98. Hall, p. 345.
99. Brubaker, pp. 19–20.
100. Ibid., p. 20.
101. William H. Sewell, Jr., “Three Temporalities: Toward an Eventful Sociol-
ogy,” in Terrence J. Mc Donald (ed.), The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences
(Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 272.
102. Ibid., pp. 262–263.
103. Ibid., p. 271.
104. Calhoun (1991), pp. 62–63.
105. Ibid., p. 65.
106. Robert Stephen Milne, Politics in Ethnically Bipolar States: Guyana, Malaysia,
Fiji (Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press, 1981), pp.
202–203.
107. A. B. Shamsul, “Nations-of-Intent in Malaysia,” in Stein Tonnesson and
Hans Antlov (eds.), Asian Forms of the Nation (Surrey, UK: Curzon Press,
1996), pp. 323–347.
108. Clifford Geertz, ‘The Politics of Meaning’, in Clifford Geertz, The Interpre-
tation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 311.
109. Ibid., p. 312.
110. Ibid.
111. Ibid., p. 313.

Helen Ting obtained her Ph.D. in political science from the Institut d’études
politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). She is currently a research fellow at
the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), National
University of Malaysia (UKM). She has contributed chapters to several
books on official nationalism and gender politics in Malaysia.