Making Up Peoples? Conferralism about Nationality
Keywords:
nationality, ontology of nations, national identity, nationality and gender, institutional factsAbstract
I will apply Ásta’s conferralist account of sex and gender to nationality, and distinguish two different ways in which nationality is conferred – by institutions (legal nationality), and in social interactions (social nationality). I will then turn to the moral and political conflicts that arise where different understandings of nationality and different ways of conferring it overlap and collide. My main thesis is that these conflicts are never simply factual disputes about who and what belongs to a nation, they are always normative conflicts about who ought to belong. This, in turn, means that we cannot think about the ontology of nationality without thinking about what nationality ought to be, a conclusion that is well in line with the basic tenets of conferralism.
References
Anderson, Benedict (2006): Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition. London and New York: Verso.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony (1994): Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values Delivered at University of California at San Diego, available at the Philpapers Archive, https://philpapers.org/archive/APPRCI.pdf, visited on 15 November 2017.
Ásta (2008): “Essentiality Conferred”. In: Philosophical Studies 140, p. 135–148. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9230-4
Ásta (2011): “The Metaphysics of Sex and Gender”. In: Charlotte Witt (Ed.): Feminist Metaphysics: Explorations in the Ontology of Sex, Gender and the Self. Dordrecht: Springer, p. 47–66. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3783-1_4
Ásta (2013a): “Knowledge of Essence: The Conferralist Story”. In: Philosophical Studies 166, p. 21–32. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-0019-0
Ásta (2013b): “The Social Construction of Human Kinds”. In: Hypatia 28, p. 716–732. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2012.01317.x
Ásta (2015): “Social Construction”. In: Philosophy Compass 10, p. 884–892.
Bach, Theodore (2016): “Social Categories are Natural Kinds, not Objective Types (and Why it Matters Politically)”. In: Journal of Social Ontology 2, p. 177–201. https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2015-0039
Brubaker, Rogers (1996): Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511558764
BVerfG (2017): “Civil Status Law Must Allow a Third Gender Option”, press release of the German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) from 08 November 2017, order of 10 October 2017, file code 1 BvR 2019/16, available at: http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2017/bvg17-095.html, visited 20 November 2017.
Calhoun, Craig (1993): “Nationalism and Ethnicity”. In: Annual Review of Sociology 19, p. 211–239. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.19.080193.001235
Canaday, Margot (2009): The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400830428
Carens, Joseph (1987): “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders”. In: The Review of Politics 49, p. 251–273. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034670500033817
Emcke, Carolin (2016): Gegen den Hass. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.
FIFA (2015/2016): “Laws of the Game”. Zurich: Fédération Internationale de Football Association, available at: https://www.fifa.com/mm/Document/FootballDevelopment/Refereeing/02/36/01/11/LawsofthegamewebEN_Neutral.pdf, visited on 16 November 2017.
Frye, Marilyn (1983): “Sexism”. In: The Politics of Reality. Berkeley, Calif.: Crossing Press, p. 17–40.
Gellner, Ernest (1983): Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hacking, Ian (1986): “Making Up People”. In: Thomas C. Heller, Morton Sosna and David E. Wellberry (Eds.): Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality and the Self in Western Thought. Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 222–236. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1n3x198.9
Hacking, Ian (1999): The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press.
Haslanger, Sally (2000): “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?” In: Nous 34, p. 31–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/0029-4624.00201
Haslanger, Sally (2012): Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199892631.001.0001
Hobsbawm, Eric J. (1992): Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521439612
Kuhar, Roman and David Paternotte (eds.) (2017): Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against Equality. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
Laegaard, Sune (2007): “Liberal Nationalism and the Nationalisation of Liberal Values”. In: Nations and Nationalism 13, p. 37–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8129.2007.00269.x
Marques, Teresa (2017): “The Relevance of Causal Social Construction”. In: Journal of Social Ontology 3, p. 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2016-0018
Meisels, Tamar (2009): Territorial Rights. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9262-6
Miller, David (1995): On Nationality. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Miller, David (2016): Strangers in our Midst: The Political Philosophy of Immigration. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674969827
Moore, Margaret (2001): “Normative Justifications for Liberal Nationalism: Justice, Democracy and National Identity”. In: Nations and Nationalism 7, p. 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8219.00001
Nelson Lindemann, Jamie (2016): “Bathrooms, Binaries, and Bioethics”, part of the “Bioethics in the News” series on the Michigan State University Bioethics blog, at: https://msubioethics.com/2016/04/21/bathrooms-binaries-bioethics/, accessed 5 July 2017.
Searle, John R. (1995): The Construction of Social Reality. London: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press.
Searle, John R. (2010): Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195396171.001.0001
Tamir, Yael (1993): Liberal Nationalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tan, Kok-Chor (2002): “Liberal Nationalism and Cosmopolitan Justice”. In: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 5, p. 431–461. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021339410934
Walzer, Michael (1983): Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic Books.
Witt, Charlotte (2011): The Metaphysics of Gender. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199740413.001.0001
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2018 Maren Behrensen
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.