2408-932XResearch Result. Social Studies and Humanities2408-932X10.18413/2408-932X-2023-9-1-0-43159RESEARCHES<strong>Do Nations Exist? An Alternative Look at an Old Problem</strong><strong>Do Nations Exist? An Alternative Look at an Old Problem</strong>WienerBoris E.WienerBoris E.wienerras@yandex.ruSociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Affiliate of the Federal Center for Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the RAS20239100

Modern social sciences rarely question the appropriateness of using the concept of a nation. However, the existence of nations, especially in the ethnic sphere, is not at all as obvious as it seems to researchers. The purpose of this article is to present arguments in favor of a critical revision of the need to use this concept in socio-scientific discourse. Russian and Western science still binds the nation to the era of capitalism. Unsuccessful attempts to define the concept of the nation have been going on since at least the 1880s. The article shows that at present the concept of a nation is useless for explaining the differences between ethnic communities under capitalism and those in previous eras. In turn, the concept of a political nation is nothing more than a synonym for denoting the totality of citizens of a particular state. The approach to the concept from the standpoint of critical realism demonstrates the preference for reasoning about groups considered as ethnonations, as about ethnies. This concept has the advantage that it can be operationalized, and also describe the mechanism that leads to the possibility of the long-term existence of ethnies. Such a mechanism is the intergenerational transmission of ethnic identity, the core of which is ethnic self-identification.

Modern social sciences rarely question the appropriateness of using the concept of a nation. However, the existence of nations, especially in the ethnic sphere, is not at all as obvious as it seems to researchers. The purpose of this article is to present arguments in favor of a critical revision of the need to use this concept in socio-scientific discourse. Russian and Western science still binds the nation to the era of capitalism. Unsuccessful attempts to define the concept of the nation have been going on since at least the 1880s. The article shows that at present the concept of a nation is useless for explaining the differences between ethnic communities under capitalism and those in previous eras. In turn, the concept of a political nation is nothing more than a synonym for denoting the totality of citizens of a particular state. The approach to the concept from the standpoint of critical realism demonstrates the preference for reasoning about groups considered as ethnonations, as about ethnies. This concept has the advantage that it can be operationalized, and also describe the mechanism that leads to the possibility of the long-term existence of ethnies. Such a mechanism is the intergenerational transmission of ethnic identity, the core of which is ethnic self-identification.

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