States, nations, and societies: a case study of Valencia

Abstract

Political activity of contemporary western societies has been structured based on a definition of territorial units of action, which we call states. This western political structure has been legitimised by a link between each state to a collective owner of sovereignty, which we call a nation. The life of this society revolves around areas linked to different fields of community life, such as production, consumption, distribution of work, etc., including the discursive elements of these practices. Social practices take place within the complex interaction between all these fields of relations, which we call social structure. Each of these collective forms (states, nations and social structure) outline several geographic and social areas, to facilitate or hinder the construction of certain collective identities and, therefore, facilitate or hinder the production of certain collective actions. In the first part, this article opens a discussion on the relationship between the concepts of state, nation, and social structure. Later, the article endeavours to empirically apply the theoretical discussion to the Valencian case, to reveal the mechanisms underlying the construction of its collective identity.