KEELY LI

Nationalism and Inequality

Nationalism is what every country basically contains. It defines as a strong belief and feeling that mainly in the significance of a geographical and demographic region with a shared group. Briefly it’s a group seeking independence for its culture or its ethnicity that have same belief and feeling to keep staying together. In other words, nationalism could be a collective state of mind and consciousness, in which people believe their duty and loyalty. Nationalism can be viewed as two perspectives, which are political prospective and sociological perspective.

Unlike other countries in Central America, Costa Rica stands out mainly for its emphasis on education, conversation and social welfare but not war or revolution. Some articles and news states that Costa Rica has been the most peaceful country in Central America. Costa Rica became a completely independent state in 1848, and that is Costa Rica’s political prospective of nationalism.

(map of Costa Rica)

According to the research on costarica-information.com, “Costa Ricans also like to emphasize that they are different by pointing out their country's high levels of education and health, its renowned national parks, and its history of democracy and political stability.” It’s the state of their minds and consciousness in Costa Rica. As I discussed above, Costa Rica has been the most peaceful country in Central America. People in Costa Rica would not have too many fights or argument about their identities. They like their identity. Costa Ricans are pride on themselves on being distinctive. Sometimes they would feel superior to other in the region.

To talk about Costa Ricans unique look, even though they’re peaceful, they still have social status on their identities. That’s what sociological perspectives work in nationalism in Costa Rica. “They are a mix of different races. Most Costa Rican’s consider themselves to be white. Being white is very important to Costa Rican sense of national identity since being white is considered to be of higher status. Many of them look very Spanish or European in coloring, yet are shorter in stature like many indigenous people.” Even in Central America, being white is considered a higher status just as the United States. It represents the importance of the race in every country in the world.

Zakaria saw danger in the rise of nationalism because the strength of the nationalism would improve each country’s individual, which will make harder to collaborate with other countries.  According to the book, “the nation-state is a relatively new invention, often no more than a hundred years old. Much older are the religious, ethnic, and linguistic groups that live within nation-states.” Costa Rica is an example because people are groups that focus much on religious, ethnic and linguistic.

(partnership with China)

Even though Costa Rica has been the most peaceful country in Central America, there still would be some inequality problems in the society, especially the poverty problem. Poverty problem could represent the economic problem in Costa Rica. As we know, Costa Rica is a developing country, but not develop as quickly as other country such as China. Refer to the reading Broken BRICS, “the primary engines behind this phenomenon were the four major emerging-market countries, known as the BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India and China. Costa Rica has a strong partnership with China, which is a very important element to help improve economy. China as an emerging-market country that could help Costa Rica reduce the inequality poverty problem. According to the research online, income inequality is one of the main elements to lead the problem about poverty inequality. According to the New York Times, “So why has Costa Rica been unable to lower its poverty rate despite healthy growth rates? Because its economic model is still in significant ways based on a mercantilist system that is biased toward certain favored sectors of the economy at the expense of the poor.” That might be a main reason for Costa Rica failing to lower its poverty rate and the reason for the inequality problem exists.

Chuqi Li

Sources: 

Broken BRICs

Zakaria

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/opinion/costa-ricas-wrong-turn.html?_r=0

http://costarica-information.com/about-costa-rica/people-culture-religion/culture/national-identity