Homo Nationis: The Psychosocial Infrastructure of the Nation-State Order

Abstract

The central argument of this paper is that the global expansion of sovereign nation-states has been accompanied by the emergence of a particular type of modern individual, homo nationis. The general significance of this argument lies in the fact that this personality type, which is either taken for granted (untheorized) or ignored, constitutes an integral component of modern social order. That is, in addition to the constitutional and institutional foundations of the state and its political economy, the nation-state has a psychosocial foundation -a "national habitus." The concepts of homo nationis and national habitus underscore that modern individuals are historical individuals, i.e. they have personality structures that are unlike those of individuals in other historical epochs, and that they should be explicitly conceptualized as such, rather than as a transhistorical homo oeconomicus or homo sociologicus. Many fundamental social processes, including those discussed under globalization, can be better explained with such a conception. The historical-structural context for homo nationis is the world order of nation-states that has only recently finished formally incorporating all other social formations from tribes to the remnants of empires, as well as the specific state-society to which the individual belongs.The paper notes the interest Durkheim and Weber had in habitual behaviour and draws on the exemplary work of Norbert Elias on national habitus to sketch its conception of homo nationis. The paper then assembles further evidence for the existence and significance of national habitus by perusing a diverse set of scholarly literatures, including national culture in business studies, national economies and economic nations, nationalism, comparative sociology, and normative political theory.