{
  "id": "nation-of-shopkeepers.kind",
  "term": "nation of shopkeepers",
  "sense": "kind",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 16,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A collective self's kind named from one pattern of its members' acts, read by it or by others as what it is and can do.",
  "folk_gloss": "a description of a people as defined by trade and commerce",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "collective-self.shared",
      "pattern.regularity",
      "name.identifier",
      "member.social",
      "act.deed",
      "read.information",
      "others.distinct-entities",
      "reach.action",
      "self-model.reflexive",
      "identity.self"
    ],
    "interaction": "One common pattern among members is taken as the whole group's kind; the name then sets a model of its reach, used by others to predict it and by the group to read itself.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "a whole read from one habit of its parts",
      "a name that sets expected reach",
      "the same label used as praise or as slight"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "Adam Smith used 'a nation of shopkeepers' in The Wealth of Nations (1776); the phrase is popularly attributed to Napoleon.",
      "domain": "history"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "this-is-who-we-are.identity-claim",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "that is the self's own claim; this kind of name is often given by others"
    },
    {
      "id": "reputation.social-model",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "reputation is any model others hold; this compresses it to one trait"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "a nation of shopkeepers",
    "nation of shopkeepers"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-29",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-nation-of-shopkeepers.kind"
}