Transnationalism and Nation State Iraq Story aired: Thursday, August 18, 2005
The process of drafting Iraq's constitution continued on its rocky path this week, with little visible progress toward resolving the country's deep divisions.
The process unfolding in Iraq is remarkably similar to a scenario played out just a few decades ago. It was England's idea after World War I to turn the various ethnic and religious groups that inhabited the region into a nation state.
But the idea was never embraced by the people who lived there.
Click the listen link to hear Sarah Shields, Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill talk about the Bristh experience in Iraq, and Iraq as a modern nation and the difficulty of creating a nation-state in a place with such strong cultural divisions.
Professor Saskia Sassen, head of the University of Chicago's Transnational Project sets that in the context of a world which has seen the growth for world powers that ignore traditional national borders, such as transnational companies and terrorist organizations.
Guests:
Sarah Shields, Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Professor Saskia Sassen, head of the University of Chicago's Transnational Project
