A nation (a word that comes from Latin and means “to be born”) is a human community with certain shared cultural characteristics and that often share the same territory and State. A nation is also a political conception, understood as the subject in which the sovereignty of a State resides.
In history, the concept as we understand it today was born at the end of the 18th century when the Contemporary Age began and the first formulations about what a nation is and how it takes place in political movements began to be elaborated. These studies are related to the Enlightenment periods and, more precisely, to the French Revolution and then the American.
It is often difficult to define the characteristics that constitute a nation as such, but it is based on the fact that the members of one share the same awareness of constituting themselves as a political body differentiated from others based on their cultural coincidences. In general, these coincidences can be ethnic, linguistic, religious, traditional and / or historical. And to this is added sometimes belonging to the same specific territory.
This set of coincidences and common consciousness regarding political unity is often called National identity. This national identity is essential to achieve the cohesion of the components of these peoples, since it is as distinctive and representative as the national symbols themselves. It is worth noting that current migratory phenomena have motivated both the integration of the individuals of a nation within other peoples and the contrasting tendency to accumulation in neighborhoods or specific areas in a city or region, almost as a safeguard of cultural identity. own of that nation.
Consequently, the concept of nation is complex and sometimes the criteria differ to distinguish it as such. For example, differences between pronunciations or dialects can constitute two people as belonging to different nations. In the same way, it is common for two people who live in different geographical locations to be considered members of the same nation.
The term "nation" is often confused with that of "State" or even with the idea of an ethnic, cultural or linguistic group even when it does not have ethical-political support. This difference is perceived when understanding that some nations, such as the gypsy, do not have their own State (organization with defined institutions and their own borders). In return, plurinational States are recognized, such as Bolivia in America, India in Asia or South Africa in the African continent.
There are different types of nation, for example, liberal, romantic, socialist, fascist and national-socialist. Most of the current nations of America and Europe are governed by liberal models, within the framework of republican systems with different nuances specific to each people. Socialist nations that persist in the 21st century include China, Cuba, or Vietnam, among others. The fascist and national-socialist models died out in World War II. In certain specific cases, it is interesting to note that the national identity of some peoples has led to the existence of very specific types of nations that are difficult to define. Thus, the Tuareg nation persists with its customs and language in northwest Africa, located in different states of that region. A similar consideration can be asserted for the Aymara nation, in the Altiplano area, as well as for the Eskimo nation in the frozen regions of the Arctic. In these cases, the presence of shared cultural characteristics that allow the individuals of these peoples to recognize each other as nationals is perfectly evident, although there are currently no national States of Tuareg, Aymara or Eskimo identification.
