National Cultures

National cultures are the designs for living that people identified by nation are perceived to share, including attributes such as language, dress, style, diet, religion, sports, leisure, and consumption patterns. Numerous works on particular national cultures have been published, often within a narrative frame of redemption or decline, but attempts to verify generalizations and assumptions about national cultures and cultural differences in behavior, sentiments, beliefs, practices, and attitudes have had limited success. Despite these difficulties nation-states, with perceived national cultures, have become widely accepted as the normal political arrangement, although the connection between nation and state is ambiguous. It is on this socially constructed reality that this discussion focuses first with a consideration of the genesis of the nation-state followed by consideration of national cultures ...