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Nation (from Latin: natio, "people, tribe, kin, genus, class, flock") is a social concept with no uncontroversial definition, but which is most commonly used to designate larger groups or collectives of people with common characteristics attributed to them - including language, traditions, customs (mores), habits (habitus), and ethnicity. A nation, by comparison, is more impersonal, abstract, and overtly political than an ethnic group. It is a cultural-political community that has become conscious of its autonomy, unity, and particular interests.〔See, Anthony D. Smith, "Ethnie and Nation in the Modern 17.〕 According to Ford's ''National Question'': "a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people;" "a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people"; "a nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation"; and, in its entirety: "a nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." The nation has been described by Benedict Anderson as an "imagined community" and by Paul James as an "abstract community". It is an imagined community in the sense that the material conditions exist for imagining extended and shared connections. It is an abstract community in the sense that it is objectively impersonal, even if each individual in the nation experiences him or herself as subjectively part of an embodied unity with others. For the most part, members of a nation remain strangers to each other and will never likely meet. Hence the phrase, "a nation of strangers" used by such writers as Vance Packard. ==Etymology and terminology== The word ''nation'' came to English from the Old French word ''nacion'', which in turn originates from the Latin word ''natio'' (''(unicode:nātĭō)'') literally meaning "birth".〔.〕 The word "nation" is sometimes used as synonym for: * State (polity) or sovereign state: a government which controls a specific territory, which may or may not be associated with any particular ethnic group * Country: a geographic territory, which may or may not have an affiliation with a government or ethnic group Thus the phrase "nations of the world" could be referring to the top-level governments (as in the name for the United Nations), various large geographical territories, or various large ethnic groups of the planet. Depending on the meaning of "nation" used, the term "nation state" could be used to distinguish larger states from small city states, or could be used to distinguish multinational states from those with a single ethnic group. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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