Nations are continually reborn and transformed, not fixed entities

Evidence

The world is not as simple as Lewis and Huntington want it to be. They desperately want to hold onto a world in which the difference between “us” and “them” is clear. What they ignore, argues Said, is that civilizational identity is not fixed but fluid. All civilizations and cultures, including so-called Western civilization, have intense, often contentious internal debates about how to define themselves. Civilizations are also shaped and transformed by all sorts of migrations and movements between peoples of different cultures. Finally, it is hard to imagine a culture today that, in the past or the present, has walled itself off from other cultures. In fact, every culture has been and continues to be involved in transformative exchanges, contacts, and conversations with other cultures. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 232 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The sovereign power of modern states was not formed prior to their involvement in the nation-state system, even in the European state system, but developed in conjunction with it. Indeed, the sovereignty of the modern state was from the first dependent upon the relations between states, in terms of which each state (in principle if by no means always in practice) recognised the autonomy of others within their own borders. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 172 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Insofar as life, having become spirit, ceaselessly creates such forms which become self-enclosed and demand permanence, these forms are inseparable from life; without them it cannot be itself. Left to itself, however, life streams on without interruption; its restless rhythm opposes the fixed duration of any particular form. Each cultural form, once it is created, is gnawed at varying rates by the forces of life. As soon as one is fully developed, the next begins to form; after a struggle that may be long or short, it will inevitably succeed its predecessor. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 838 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Inner transformation precedes and drives national sovereignty — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 618; Inner psychological mutation, not independence, is what generates national sovereignty; Civilizational identity is fluid, not fixed or walled off — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 232 (+7 more)

Related

• Civilizational identity is fluid, not fixed or walled off (similarity 0.84)
• States gain global influence only by surrendering some sovereignty (similarity 0.82)
• Essentialist cultural identity is a closed, timeless myth with real shaping power (similarity 0.82)
• Modern historical processes like industrialization and nation-state dominance stabilized collective identities (similarity 0.81)
• Cultures represent themselves as fixed but are always changed by history (similarity 0.79)
• Essentializing a civilization as unchanging serves political rather than scholarly purposes. (similarity 0.79)
• State sovereignty is constituted by the nation-state system, not prior to it (similarity 0.79)
• Cultures are never fixed or originary but constantly changed by movement and history (similarity 0.79)
• Civilizations are cultural not political and rarely match state boundaries. (similarity 0.78)
• Inner transformation precedes and drives national sovereignty (similarity 0.78)
• Nearly all nation-states formed by absorbing culturally diverse peoples, not by ethnic homogeneity (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Civilizational identity is fluid, not fixed or walled off #corroborates (0.85) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 232
• State sovereignty is constituted by the nation-state system, not prior to it #corroborates (0.80) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 172
• Each cultural form is inevitably replaced by its successor #corroborates (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 838
• Culture is a process of creating and transforming reality, not an environment. #expands (0.55) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 323
• Hegemony is reproduced through unstable, shifting equilibria rather than static dominance #corroborates (0.50)
• Capitalism’s global unification paradoxically generated nationalism as fragmentation #complicates (0.40)