Well done, reminds of a book a read a very long time ago, "But Not in Canada!" by Walter Stewart
I've never cared much for the practice of attributing attributes to people based on their nationality, but reality is people do acquire some common attributes its party of belonging to a society.
I hadn’t read any Walter Stewart, but looking at a book synopsis and even looking at the Wikipedia for the author suggests it would be very interesting.
I did a bit of exploring the themes in that 1976 book via Gemini, and find it expressed ideas about Canada that I was unaware of until the last decade.
From Gemini (not intelligence, just a bigger and more expensive search engine).
“If you are looking at the friction between Westphalian territorial sovereignty (the Canadian state) and "genos" sovereignty (peoples-based jurisdiction), the White Paper era is the definitive "Ground Zero" for that conflict in modern Canadian history.
Stewart’s writing captures the moment the Westphalian state tried to "finish" its jurisdiction by absorbing Indigenous peoples into a single legal category, and the moment those peoples re-asserted a separate, inherent sovereignty that the state’s legal framework couldn't contain.”
It was long time ago, but I remember the book. Wish I had my own copy, I used frequent public library then. Westphalian , you mention it a lot, yes it was notable , but mankind's history gives back many more centuries , and borders are a very old concept, so is the notion of states, and citizenship, one could make an argument that are all Roman!
To clarify, I do not consider the unique history of the lands impacted by the Roman Empire, such as Western Europe, to be "mankind's history". That is only the unique history of a specific region of the planet.
Of course the Western European concept of Westphalian sovereignty is built upon Roman Empire ideologies, but that doesn't make any of these ideologies universal aspects of "mankind's history".
I believe it is useful to be aware there are (at least, but I don’t know others) two different types of “nationalities” to be aware of.
a) Westphalian sovereignty — where a “prince” (or now allegedly secular governments) have exclusive control over land and live within strict geographical boundaries.
b) Peoples (note the “s” — think about the Greek word “genos”) based sovereignty, where the peoples are self-defined over centuries/millennia and the geography is shared rather than exclusive between a series of different peoples.
In the case of Westphalian sovereignty, there are systems which seek to impose common ideologies on the population in order to manufacture social cohesion. In the case of peoples-based sovereignty, social cohesion is built in and the work is constant negotiation with other peoples over shared resources.
I don’t personally attribute ideologies to individuals, but it is critical to understanding the geographic exclusivity imposed “society” what the SYSTEMS are indoctrinating the population with.
Well written and explained! From a patriotic, but not proud, American hoping this "grand experiment" in Democracy lasts long enough to actually see racism end some day! In the US, Canada and worldwide. Unlikely I know, but something to aspire to once we clear our own malware! :-)
Well done, reminds of a book a read a very long time ago, "But Not in Canada!" by Walter Stewart
I've never cared much for the practice of attributing attributes to people based on their nationality, but reality is people do acquire some common attributes its party of belonging to a society.
I hadn’t read any Walter Stewart, but looking at a book synopsis and even looking at the Wikipedia for the author suggests it would be very interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Stewart_(journalist)#1970s
I did a bit of exploring the themes in that 1976 book via Gemini, and find it expressed ideas about Canada that I was unaware of until the last decade.
From Gemini (not intelligence, just a bigger and more expensive search engine).
“If you are looking at the friction between Westphalian territorial sovereignty (the Canadian state) and "genos" sovereignty (peoples-based jurisdiction), the White Paper era is the definitive "Ground Zero" for that conflict in modern Canadian history.
Stewart’s writing captures the moment the Westphalian state tried to "finish" its jurisdiction by absorbing Indigenous peoples into a single legal category, and the moment those peoples re-asserted a separate, inherent sovereignty that the state’s legal framework couldn't contain.”
It was long time ago, but I remember the book. Wish I had my own copy, I used frequent public library then. Westphalian , you mention it a lot, yes it was notable , but mankind's history gives back many more centuries , and borders are a very old concept, so is the notion of states, and citizenship, one could make an argument that are all Roman!
To clarify, I do not consider the unique history of the lands impacted by the Roman Empire, such as Western Europe, to be "mankind's history". That is only the unique history of a specific region of the planet.
Of course the Western European concept of Westphalian sovereignty is built upon Roman Empire ideologies, but that doesn't make any of these ideologies universal aspects of "mankind's history".
some points of agreement, cool
I believe it is useful to be aware there are (at least, but I don’t know others) two different types of “nationalities” to be aware of.
a) Westphalian sovereignty — where a “prince” (or now allegedly secular governments) have exclusive control over land and live within strict geographical boundaries.
b) Peoples (note the “s” — think about the Greek word “genos”) based sovereignty, where the peoples are self-defined over centuries/millennia and the geography is shared rather than exclusive between a series of different peoples.
In the case of Westphalian sovereignty, there are systems which seek to impose common ideologies on the population in order to manufacture social cohesion. In the case of peoples-based sovereignty, social cohesion is built in and the work is constant negotiation with other peoples over shared resources.
I don’t personally attribute ideologies to individuals, but it is critical to understanding the geographic exclusivity imposed “society” what the SYSTEMS are indoctrinating the population with.
Well written and explained! From a patriotic, but not proud, American hoping this "grand experiment" in Democracy lasts long enough to actually see racism end some day! In the US, Canada and worldwide. Unlikely I know, but something to aspire to once we clear our own malware! :-)