Anthropology › Section H · Political anthropology › Topic H.4
Modern nation-states
Today almost every person on Earth lives inside a nation-state, a form only a few centuries old. Anthropologists ask how states persuade millions of strangers that they belong together, and how colonial rule shaped the states that much of the world inherited.
In this topic
- Nation plus state
- How the system of states arose
- Imagined communities
- Worked example: making a national language
- Bureaucracy and biopower
- Colonial states
- Postcolonial states and 'fragility'
- Worked example: reading Ghana's coups
- Globalisation and the nation
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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