Editing Country (section)

== Definition of a country ==

In English, the word has increasingly become associated with political divisions, so that one sense, associated with the [[indefinite article]] – "a country" – is now frequently applied as a synonym for a state or a former sovereign state. It may also be used as a synonym for "nation". Taking as examples [[Canada]], [[Sri Lanka]], and [[Yugoslavia]], cultural anthropologist [[Clifford Geertz]] wrote in 1997 that "it is clear that the relationships between 'country' and 'nation' are so different from one [place] to the next as to be impossible to fold into a dichotomous opposition as they are into a promiscuous fusion."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Geertz |first=Clifford |date=1997 |title=What is a Country if it is Not a Nation? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24590031 |journal=The Brown Journal of World Affairs |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=235–247 |jstor=24590031 |issn=1080-0786}}</ref>

Areas much smaller than a political state may be referred to as countries, such as the [[West Country]] in England, "big sky country" (used in various contexts of the [[American West]]), "coal country" (used to describe [[coal-mining region]]s in several sovereign states) and many other terms.<ref name="oed">{{cite encyclopedia |title=country, n. |editor-first1=John |editor-last1=Simpson |editor-first2=Edmund |editor-last2=Weiner |encyclopedia=[[Oxford English Dictionary]] |edition=1971 compact |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford, England |isbn=978-0-19-861186-8}}</ref> The word "country" is also used for the sense of [[Aboriginal title|native sovereign territory]], such as the widespread use of [[Indian country]] in the United States.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Matal |first=Joseph |date=1997-12-01 |title=A Revisionist History of Indian Country |url=https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/alr/vol14/iss2/1 |journal=Alaska Law Review |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=283–352 |issn=0883-0568 |access-date=19 October 2022 |archive-date=11 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230111202441/https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/alr/vol14/iss2/1/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
The term "country" in English may also be wielded to describe [[rural area]]s, or used in the form "countryside." [[Raymond Williams]], a Welsh scholar, wrote in 1975:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Williams |first=Raymond |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/624711 |title=The country and the city |date=1973 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-519736-4 |location=New York |oclc=624711 |access-date=23 August 2022 |archive-date=27 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220827204730/https://www.worldcat.org/title/624711 |url-status=live }}</ref>

{{Block quote|text='Country' and 'city' are very powerful words, and this is not surprising when we remember how much they seem to stand for in the experience of human communities. In English, 'country' is both a nation and a part of a 'land'; 'the country' can be the whole society or its rural area. In the long history of human settlements, this connection between the land from which directly or indirectly we all get our living and the achievements of human society has been deeply known.|author=|title=|source=}}

The unclear definition of "country" in modern English was further commented upon by philosopher [[Simon Keller]]:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Keller |first=Simon |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/441874932 |title=New waves in political philosophy |date=2009 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-0-230-23499-4 |editor-last=De Bruin |editor-first=Boudewijn |location=Basingstoke, England |pages=96 |chapter=Making Nonsense of Loyalty to Country |oclc=441874932 |editor-last2=Zurn |editor-first2=Christopher F. |access-date=23 August 2022 |archive-date=27 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220827204729/https://www.worldcat.org/title/441874932 |url-status=live }}</ref>

{{Blockquote|text=Often, a country is presumed to be identical with a collection of citizens. Sometimes, people say that a country is a project, or an idea, or an ideal. Occasionally, philosophers entertain more metaphysically ambitious pictures, suggesting that a country is an organic entity with its own independent life and character, or that a country is an autonomous agent, just like you or me. Such claims are rarely explained or defended, however, and it is not clear how they should be assessed. We attribute so many different kinds of properties to countries, speaking as though a country can feature wheat fields waving or be girt by sea, can have a founding date and be democratic and free, can be English speaking, culturally diverse, war torn or Islamic.|title=''New Waves In Political Philosophy'', "Making Nonsense of Loyalty to Country"|source=page 96}}[[Melissa Lucashenko]], an [[Aboriginal Australians|Aboriginal Australian]] writer, expressed the difficulty of defining "country" in a 2005 essay, "Unsettlement":<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Lucashenko |first=Melissa |date=2005-01-01 |title=Country: Being and belonging on aboriginal lands |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/14443050509388027 |journal=Journal of Australian Studies |volume=29 |issue=86 |pages=7–12 |doi=10.1080/14443050509388027 |s2cid=143550941 |issn=1444-3058}}</ref>
{{Block quote|text=...What is this thing country? What does country
mean? ... I spoke with others who said country meant Home, but who added the caveat that Home resided in people rather than places{{snd}}a kind of portable Country... I tried to tease out some ways in which non-Indigenous people have understood country. I made categories: Country as Economy. Country as Geography. Country as Society. Country as Myth. Country as History. For all that I walked, slept, breathed and dreamed Country, the language still would not come.}}