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Terry, In American English, we use "nation" and "state" the way the Australians do. I live in the State of North Carolina but my "nation" or "country" is the United States of America. Every fifty years or so we get into a large fight about what that means--what power do states have and what power does the federal government have. I made a wood type poster for the 150th anniversary of the fight that killed about 650,000 Americans that's at http://www.heritageoftreason.com but it was also about the current incarnation of the argument. (I suspect that there's a good joke about "nation" in "incarnation" but I'm afraid that I'm not up to finding it today.) Gunnar ---------- Gunnar Swanson Design Office 1901 East 6th Street Greenville NC 27858 USA [log in to unmask] +1 252 258 7006 http://www.gunnarswanson.com On Oct 21, 2011, at 4:38 AM, Terence Love wrote: > Hi Alun, > > Thanks for your correction. > > The issue of 'nation' in Australia is not that obvious to those of us who moved there from elsewhere. Australia looks like and behaves like some individual 'nation states' grouped together into a federation. In fact, the legal discourse about the governance at State and Federal levels in Australia is exactly of this form. Informally, however, politicians and plebians alike also refer to Australia as a 'nation'. This complicates the heck out of things - it makes much more sense to refer to the individual States of the federation of Australia as nations. > > The difference seems to reflect two different meanings of 'nation': on one hand to refer to 'country', on the other hand, to refer to 'sovereign state'. In the Australian situation, this gets the definitions coming and going in both directions! - complicated further by the indigenous use of the term 'country'. > > It suggests, and Derek's comments would be helpful, that the complexity of terms like 'nation' will increasingly need to be addressed in design research, especially in relation to improving the design of countries' policies, strategies and interventions. > > Best wishes, > Terry > ---- > <snip> On Behalf Of Alun Price > Subject: Re: Going to school to improve university design education and research > Thank you Terry for your comments on the Senior School Design course in Western Australia. One point to correct, you mention national curriculum and national marking of portfolios; this is of course state not national. The state of WA is however quite large, about 2.5 million squre kilometers, about 3.5 times the size of Texas.