ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes some hypotheses and discusses some crucial methodological problems concerning the analysis of national political cultures. An approach equating political life with the production and reproduction of a nation-state is prima facie fraught with conceptual difficulties and charged with dubious ideological connotations. The study of political culture is much more than a specialized subfield of the discipline: it is a prerequisite to political inquiry. Ever since the French Revolution, fascinated or horrified political thinkers have reflected upon nationalism. Very few politically organized communities can exist as anything else than as nations and maintain their autonomy. The problem of the role of the state stands at the top of the political agenda at both the right and the left ends of the ideological spectrum. The political vision that best characterizes the anthropological discourse of the new cybernetics portrays man as a political animal, insofar as his sense of self reaches to the level of a self-organizing public sphere.
