Markup View

Author: Thenakedcat

Jun 8th 2012 at 11:30:40 AM

The summary for the proposed trope needs to get at something in real life nation states that is socially constructed, i.e., the idea of distinct races or ethnic groups with cultural characteristics that line up with underlying biological divisions. Although racial and ethnic divisions and how they line up with nationality are pretty hairy business even just on Earth (even a nation like Japan, with oceans marking its borders and a level of ethnic homogeneity that makes Americans boggle, has minority groups like the Ainu and Zainichi Koreans), in scifi and fantasy that social construct gets extended beyond the population level to entire species.

If you want to see just how much these kinds of differences tend to get simplified in real life, try to scifi/fantasy the ethnopolitical situation in Belgium. It took them 541 days from election to governing coalition in the last political cycle because of the level of disconnect between the Walloon and Flemish ethnic groups.

Of course, there are also examples on Earth where nations have been much more successful in selling an idea of national identity that overrides racial and ethnic boundaries (for all their issues with race and ethnicity, the US and Canada have been pretty good at building "nation of immigrants" into a brand). It's interesting that we DON'T see more of those nations in SF/F.