[By Phil Squattrito – Flickr: Undercarriage, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17586908 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge#/media/File:Tridge_Undercarriage.jpg%5D
What we have today is in effect a dual system, the official one of the “national economies” of states, and the real but largely unofficial one of transnational units and institutions . . . [U]nlike the state with its territory and power, other elements of the ‘nation’ can be and easily are overridden by the globalization of the economy. Ethnicity and language are the two obvious ones. Take away state power and coercive force, and their relative insignificance is clear.
(Hobsbawm, Eric, The Nation and Globalization; in: Constellations, 5_1.1998: 4f.)
COMMEDIA DELLA VITA OR PÁNTA RÊI'S FIRM GROUND 
