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The Nation State : Cultural, Economic, And International Relations Essay

Decent Essays

Though many argue the opposite, in a globalizing world, the nation-state still has a role to play and should continue to maintain this role. As defined by the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, a nation-state is “a form of political organization under which a relatively homogeneous people inhabits a sovereign state.” This would imply that globalization, defined by the same source as "the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets,” and the nation-state would be two contradicting ideas that cannot coexist. However, they seem to not only coexist, but work together. This almost symbiotic relationship is exemplified when globalization is examined through a cultural, economic, and international relations lens.
The Nation-State in Cultural Globalization

Globalization can be examined through a cultural lens that can be split up into ethnic and civic lens in order to understand the role of the nation-state. The nation-state is a state that is formed based on a set of shared traits, which means that as long as there are these shared traits keep a state together, the nation-state exists. Through an ethnic lens, some nation-states, such as South Korea and China, are formed based on shared descent and other factors such as language and tradition. This causes ethnic nationalism, or the “loyalty to a shared tradition based on culture, language, or religion” (Garner et

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