2. 外语
  3. For most of the twentieth century, scholars generally accepted the proposition that nations are enduring entities that predated

For most of the twentieth century, scholars generally accepted the proposition that nations are enduring entities that predated

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问题 For most of the twentieth century, scholars generally accepted the proposition that nations are enduring entities that predated the rise of modern nation-states and that provided the social and cultural foundations of the state. This perspective has certainly been applied to Korea; most historians have assumed that the Korean nation has existed since the dawn of historical time. In recent years, however, Western scholars have questioned the idea of the nation as an enduring entity. Both Gellner and Anderson have argued, in their studies of European, Latin American, and Southeast Asian cases, that the nation is strictly a modern phenomenon, a forging of a common sense of identity among previously disparate social groups through the propagandizing efforts of activities of the modern state. In short, it was the state that created the nation, not the other way around.
Younger Koreanists, with Em prominent among them, have begun to apply this approach to Korea. These scholars, noting the isolated nature of village life in premodern Korea and the sharp difference in regional dialects, suggest that ordinary villagers could not possibly have thought of themselves as fellow countrymen of villagers in other regions. These scholars also note that elites, conversely, often had outward-looking, universalistic orientations, as did aristocracies elsewhere, such as in premodern Europe. Finally, they observe that the very word for “nation” in Korean, minjok, is a neologism first employed by Japanese scholars as translation of the Western concept and that it was first appropriated by Korean activists in the early twentieth century. They argue, therefore, that a Korean “nation” came into being only after that time.
In short, in the case of Korea we have an argument between “primordialists”, who contend that nations are natural and universal units of history, and “modernists”, who assert that nations are historically contingent products of modernity. The positions of both groups seem problematic. It seems unlikely that in the seventh century the peoples of the warring states of Koguryo, Peakche, and Shilla all thought of themselves as members of a larger “Korean” collectivity. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the Korean peninsula had a much longer history —well over one thousand years—as a unified political collectivity than did the peoples studied by Gellner and Anderson. Not only does the remarkable endurance of the Korean state imply some sort of social and cultural basis for that unity, but the nature of the premodern Korean state as a centralized bureaucratic polity also suggests the possibility that the organizational activities of the state may have created a homogenous collectivity with a sense of shared identity much earlier than happened in the countries of western Europe that provide the model for “modernist” scholarship.
The author would probably agree with which of the following statements regarding the work of Gellner and of Anderson?
选项 A、Neither Gellner’s nor Anderson’s work has had a significant influence on the study of the Korean nation.
B、Their argument that the nation is a strictly modern phenomenon does not hold in the case of Korea.
C、Both of them have downplayed the propagandizing efforts of Korean intellectuals as a means of forging a Korean identity.
D、Both of them have exaggerated the homogenizing impact of the state as a factor in the case of nations.
E、Both them have overestimated the extent to which disparate social groups find a common sense of identity through belonging to the same nation.
答案D
解析 本文中体现作者观点的段落是第三段。同时我们已经知道，Gellner和Anderson研究的是欧洲、拉丁美洲和东南亚。作者在第三段第四句中说朝鲜的民族历史要长于Gellner和Anderson所研究的民族历史，因此我们只能判断出Gellner和Anderson的研究成果不适用于韩国。所以B选项对。本题D选项exaggerate也是在否定Gellner和Anderson的观点，但是从文中只能看出Gellner和Anderson的观点在韩国不适用，不见得在其他国家也是错的(国家起到的统一化力量这一观点在第一段第四句提到了)。
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