Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Studies of culture and the state focus on a range of relationships between modern political regimes and patterns of symbolic and material life. They reveal the diverse ways that power works through culture, and provide means for a better understanding of how power is accumulated, organized, and deployed in or around state systems. Much work in this subfield takes nationalism to be the fundamental culture of states, but most scholars working in this tradition do not make the mistake of treating national cultures as natural kinds. They try instead to understand how the processes involved in developing and shaping state power since the nineteenth century have generated distinctive national forms of political culture. Sociologists studying nationalism and its development have revealed the cultural techniques used in the creation of nationalist movements and identities. They have investigated the use of propaganda, the arts, gender relations, sexuality, storytelling, engineering, dress, and the media to establish taken-for-granted connections between populations and their governments. Other scholars interested in culture and states have examined political processes like voting, policymaking, public advocacy, court procedures, and the use of violence, considering these activities as cultural performances or narrative devices, and following the complex rituals by which power is both exercised ... log in or subscribe to read full text