Social Communication in Nation Building

The basis of nationality is the sensé of belonging to the same nation and the désire on the part of its members to live with each other at this level of community. When the political scientist wants to de fine or locate this subjective sensé of community, he has used such objective criteria as common language, common history, common territory, and so forth. It is clear that ail thèse criteria are an expression of something more basic—shared expérience. This shared expérience, which may lead to the necessary mutual trust among members of a given society and to the feeling that this group as a group is différent from others, contributes continuously to national unity. National unity likewise makes shared expérience more possible.
To détermine the human and géographie frontiers of a nation the political scientist must find ways to examine this shared expérience. The problems in the Tiers Monde are greater with regard to such research than they are in Europe because much of the necessary data are not available. Research at very basic levels with some new methods is necessary.
Karl W. Deutsch, professor of political science at Yale University, has proposed a quantitative interdisciplinary way to examine shared expérience and, indirectly, the sensé of community.1 He suggests that one measure the quantities of communications among a given people to find out how much contact they hâve. For this one must use criteria such as flows of letters, telegrams, movement of vehicles, trains, planes, téléphone calls, mass média of communication, location of markets, settlement patterns, and population movements, he says. If it is possible to examine thèse différent forms of communication, or as many as possible of them, it is equally possible, he says, to estimate shared expérience and make prédictions about increases or decreases in shared expérience.
The first stage in this process, that of physical contact, is called "mobilization". People who hâve intensive communications