ABSTRACT
It is common to argue that the (nation-)state is the most significant of the social forms that modernity has produced (Giddens, 1991). The state, in this view, is understood as a political organization covering a particular territory. This organization exploits contextual forms of territoriality, possesses sur veillance capacities and exercises a monopoly over the means of violence - physical, symbolic and intellectual - which it exploits in the control of its territory and citizens, the latter understood (or at least represented) as con stituting a ‘nation’. The nation is an imagined community which manifests itself in diverging social, cultural, political and administrative practices. Represented by a state, it exists only when that state has a unified adminis trative grasp on the territory over which it claims sovereignty (Giddens, 1987). This means that, to be successful in reproducing itself, a state must always have specific symbolic and institutional practices for narrating, sig nifying and legitimating the existence of a nation and the bounded space that it occupies. Besides administration, other crucial practices are econom ics and culture, particularly control over education and language. Language has the power to create meaning, education the power to direct meaning (cf. Zalewski and Enloe, 1995).
