Discussing Ethnos, Polis, Demos and Cives in the context of Spanish politics

Globalization and successive waves of economic crisis are eroding nation state sovereignty and shaking the social pact upon which modern states base their legitimacy. At the same time, nationalism is naturalized in today’s society, being a powerful symbolic tool whereby people can be emotionally mobilized whenever the nation is perceived to be at risk. Nationalism may cast away its banal appearance and take up xenophobic tones, advocating for ethnos (cultural imagined community) to be the basis legitimizing polis (state) at the expense of cives (citizens’ rights and duties). But, can the realm of affectivity be dissociated from the rational realm of rights and duties? Can civic and political participation be decoupled from cultural and territorial dimensions of citizenship? This chapter discusses this in light of the crisis of nation states, and reflects on the notions of social pact, imagined community, banal nationalism and demos in relation to the Catalan crisis.