ACR Essay. Musina Valentyna

	ARGUMENT	COUNTERARGUMENT	REBUTTAL
Origin	National feeling is a biological phenomenon	National feeling is a construct	Though some  components of nation  can be chosen, it is completely natural feature
Development	Elite creates institutes to promote nation inside the society	Nation emerged and developed without any personal influence	Modern developed nations function without any influence, but their creation was artificial

 Initially nation is a vital part of every stable state creation. According to the generalized definition, nation is a large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, and language, inhabiting a particular country or territory [1]. Therefore, the main characteristic of nation is creation of the collective connection atmosphere among the citizens residing in a particular state. Nevertheless, among nation researchers a huge discussion retains concerning features of this term; consequently, nation study can be divided into two polar approaches: primordialism and constructivist theory. All these theories together make a complex vision towards the key concepts of nation study: origins of national feeling and development mechanism of nation.

First of all, contemporary nation study shares primordialistic assumption that national feeling is a natural phenomenon; in fact, biologically we are born within definite state creation in a family with certain nationality. Moreover, all the instruments of our socialization inside the society are provided using determinate national language, culture, customs, and religion. Nevertheless, there are cases of people that define some of the national origin’s components by themselves: choosing citizenship (as Gérard Depardieu became Russian lately), changing religion (especially when it is associated with another country, like Islam for Ukraine) or moving to another country (that is common nowadays because of globalization processes). However, these examples appear rarely and these people do not reject their roots while changing their lives. And so, in a modern nation study national origins are defined as natural.

Another cornerstone emerges while analyzing the development mechanism of nation. Repeatedly, contemporary world’s globalization brought revision in nation study, and nation because of its mobility is seen nowadays as a constructed phenomenon by some set of instruments. The determinate composition of this mechanism differs depending on the researcher; specifically, B. Anderson selected literature, museum, map, census, and newspaper [2]. Still, it should be admitted that most modern nations are on the final stage of their development; consequently, their existence and development can be assumed as natural. Nevertheless, state as a constructed creation requires all the institutes within its boundaries to be constructed too, and the nation was not an exception.

All in all, nation study is a complicated discipline because of its central concepts ambiguity. Although in an individual section won primordialism considering national feeling as given for a person a priori, nation as a collective peculiarity of state social groups is seen in terms of constructivist theory as an artificially built phenomenon by the state leaders and/or cultural activists. Therefore, the discussion of two basic approaches in nation study preserves.        

References:

1.     1.  Oxford Dictionaries. Available at: http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/nation

2.      2. Anderson Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New Edition). – Verso, 2006. – 240 pages.