ABSTRACT
Nations raise a series of problematic issues. Sleeping nations wake and claim self-determination when they fear for their culture, their place in the landscape and their survival. Although sovereignty is the fundamental principle of international relations, states are also committed to rights observance, however insincerely and imperfectly individual states manage in practice. This chapter traces the nations' evolution from the pre-modern to the modern. The co-emergence in Europe goes some way to explain why nation and state are so often deemed synonymous. The chapter examines some broad, and radically different manifestations of national self-determination. It considers the nation's congruence with the state and kin-based forms of social organization, in order to illustrate the distinctions between state and nation, and to bring some clarity to the terms as they are currently understood. The book shifts the focus to the nation's view of injustice.
