THE NATION - WHO, WHY, WHEN AND HOW

The article's structure reflects Anthony D. Smith's three questions << Who is the nation?>> <<Why and how does the nation emerge?>> <<When an d how did the nation arise?>> These three questions, taken from Anthon y D. Smiths' National Identity, are discussed in the Light of the view points of the four leading figures within nation theories: Anthony D. Smith, Ernest Gellner, Stein Rokkan and Benedict Anderson. They all gi ve different answers to the questions. While Smith says that national identity cannot easily be constructed by nation-builders, as it is dee ply rooted in the ethnic basis from the history, Gellner takes the opp osite standpoint and says that the nation is constructed within the mo dem state. The nation thus corresponds to the political-territorial sp here. Also Rokkan sees the nation as a product of the modem state, eve n though he asserts that the only neccesary hallmark of a nation is a national consciousness. At last, Anderson gives weight to the people's subjective feeling of belonging to the same nation, which often comes with the joint written language.