you're told that what goes on in other countries is none of your concern & you should only care about what's happening inside your borders. ppl still tend to equate "society" with the nation-state, we need to decouple these so it doesn't limit our sense of responsibility &concern

there is a term for this in social science called "methodological nationalism". it refers to the idea that the nation-state is 1) a natural result of history & 2) a core unit of analysis

there are many historical reasons that concept got to dominate our thinking, but we need to be aware of the ways in which it limits our sense of compassion and the powerful biases it establishes in the models we have about how the world works

"Methodological nationalism takes the following ideal premises for granted: it equates societies with nation-state societies, and sees states and their governments as the cornerstones of a social sciences analysis."
- Ulrich Beck

It assumes that humanity is naturally divided into a limited number of nations, which on the inside, organize themselves as nation-states and, on the outside, set boundaries to distinguish themselves from other nation-states." - UB

"It goes even further: this outer delimitation, as well as the competition between nation-states, represents the most fundamental category of political organization [...] Indeed the social science stance is rooted in the concept of nation-state." - UB

"It is a nation-state outlook on society and politics, law, justice and history, which governs the sociological imagination." - UB

"Social science must be re-established as a transnational science of the reality of de-nationalization, transnationalization and ‘re-ethnification’ in a global age – and this on the levels of concepts, theories and methodologies as well as organizationally." - UB

This entails that the fundamental concepts of ‘modern society’ must be re-examined. Household, family, class, social inequality, democracy, power, state, commerce, public, community, justice, law, history, politics must be released from the fetters of methodological nationalism"

and must be reconceptualised and empirically established within the framework of a cosmopolitan social and political science." - UB

it's an important step Beck is making, but keep also in mind that the concept of the nation-state has always been questioned & reframed by several thinkers from Marx, Weber to Habermas, it's not as if it was always accepted as dogma by all intellectuals.

for instance, Marx's analysis that capitalism becomes 'global' & 'dissolves' the state. it makes markets, communications, & culture 'global', both strengthening the nation as a means to uphold capitalism & at the same time eroding it under the force of a global capitalism

"All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become anti-quated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned" Marx & Engels (Communist Manifesto)

indeed, as many of today's mainstream economists have pointed out, the global economy takes precedence in determining the nature of the state more and more instead of the other way around

thinking of state power as a result of material (economic) circumstances is a crucial first step in dissolving the idea of methodological nationalism: we understand that nations (esp. the ones suffering from imperialism) are only partially responsible of what happens in them

this is just one of the aspects that should inform our thinking regarding nations. i will continue this thread at another point or i'll do a stream on it in the near future. this is a very important topic to me which i wanna explore more, i hope you found this interesting so far

i think this is a crucial topic for organizing labor/the left in general, the future of left activism is eg. using the opportunity of modern communication to strengthen the working class within each country & depends on a renewed conception of what internationalism implies today

to beat an internationally organized capitalist class there needs to be solid cooperation & solidarity among the international working class. workers of the world,