Abstract:
THE NATION-STATE AS NORM GENERATES A SYLLOGISM, viz., the international system is one of nation-states; Papua New Guinea (PNG) (or wherever) is a state; therefore PN G (or ... ) is a nation. (If not, it ought to be.) Such logic renders statehood problematic for many places made independent by post -WWII decolonization, especially those characterized by cultural and linguistic diversity, limited shared histories, and little else in the way of the markers highlighted by stereotypical nationalist discourse. How to persuade a citizenry to loyalty to, feeling towards, a sense of belonging within, and community with an entity that is more extensive than, and/or transects, precolonial imaginative, political, strategic, economic, and social orientations, constituting erstwhile others as conationals as against former kin, allies, or heretofore unconsidered others as Others? To use Benedict Anderson's iconic phrase, how might such states develop the imagined communities of the nation? What might this thing, "PNG," be beyond the Third World residuum of an obsolete geopolitical era? The challenge appears one of naturalizing the manifestly contrived.