Cultural Complexity in the Post-colonial Era and Prospects of Nation-building in the Global South and the Global North

P. 331–372.

Dmitri Bondarenko

Not only liberated countries of the Global South are post-colonial but the whole world entered the post-colonial period that began after World War II, as the changes decolonization has brought to the Global North are probably no less crucial. In particular, post-colonial realities have been changing the very nature of the nation as a fundamental phenomenon of Modernity. Nation is becoming a more complex social, cultural, and political unit as before, as its fundamental characteristic as a culturally homogeneous (monocultural) community is changing. This feature had become a cornerstone of the concept of nation at its formation in the West by the last decades of the 18th century, but migration flows from the Global South to the Global North provoked by decolonization change nations as realities, as well as the concept of nation, in countries of the North making them polycultural. Most liberated states the South are polycultural from the very beginning, because they inherited the colonial borders in which, as a rule, many peoples were united. It should not be ruled out that their initial polyculturalism can become their advantage rather than an obstacle in the path of their development in the present-day world if they stop trying to build nations on the outdated Western model of the late 18th – mid-20th centuries and go to building them as polycultural communities. A nation in a nation-state in which citizenship is flexible, because a nation is considered as multicultural and not identified with a “titular” culture, is more complex both structurally (as it integrates more cultural components) and in terms of complexity science – the general “complexity theory,” in which the degree of a phenomenon’s complexity is determined not by its remoteness from a possible point of disintegration or chaos, but, on the contrary, by its proximity to it. As a
more complex entity, a multicultural nation demands more complex cultural, social, political mechanisms of regulation of relations in it, more “fine work” of public and state institutions. The challenge both “old” nations of the Global North and “young” nations of the Global South share is that of transnationalism. Nation was adequate to Modernity – the time of industrial capitalism coupled with the rise and flourishing of cultural
nationalism and political democracy. But it is discussable if nation will survive transnationalization of the post-modern world that puts under question the future of national economies, national cultures, and nation-states themselves, at least as they have been conceptualized up to now.

Keywords: постколониальная эпоха, nation-building, cultural complexity, культурная сложность, нациестроительство, post-colonial era, глобальный Север, глобальный Юг, Global South, Global North

Publication based on the results of: Interactions between homoarchical and heterarchical cultures in varying historical contexts (2024)

In book

Abitare le diversità: Culture e complessità nuove

Ruffino R., Ceruti M., Hannerz U., Vertovec S., Anselmo A., Bennett M., Dominici P., Eriksen T. H., Busdraghi C., Mennini C., Lazzarini A., Pennisi A., Buchanan M., Damiano L., Gembillo G., Jörg T., Preiser R., Remotti F., Treccarichi F., Bondarenko D. M., Bustreo M., Favole A., Gianfaldoni S., Santerini M., Verdooren A., Balboni P., Boix-Mansilla V., Bosticco G., Cambi F., Landler-Pardo G., Porcellana V. Colle di Val d'Elsa: Fondazione Intercultura, 2024.