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hqdefault

Siniša Malešević and Mark Haugaard (eds.)
Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Political Thought

Full PDF Full PDF

bosnian parliament

Ian O’Flynn and Didier Caluwaerts
Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies

There are many reasons why democracy is difficult in societies deeply divided along ethnic lines.

Klasična_gimnazija_Travnik0496

Snorre Standish Norheim
EDUCATION AT A STANDSTILL: How the Consociational School of Thought Has Perpetuated Ethnic Conflict in Post-War Bosnia

This study set out to explore why the consociational prescription to have cultural autonomy in education contributes to perpetuating ethnic conflict instead of conflict resolving, in post-war societies like Bosnia and Herzegovina.

139

Moran M. Mandelbaum
One state – one nation: the naturalisation of nation-state congruency in IR theory

This paper suggests that the notion of nation-state congruency has become a ‘leitmotif in International Relations (IR) theory, especially since the end of the Cold War. Congruent states are often constructed as the precursor of liberal democracy, peace, and modernity, while security in particular is discursively intertwined with nation-state congruency.

hqdefault

Moran M. Mandelbaum
The Gellnerian Modality Revisited: Towards a ‘Genealogy’ of Cultural Homogenization and Nation-State Congruency

This paper re-evaluates Ernest Gellner’s theory of nations and nationalism and particularly his conceptions of cultural homogenization and congruency.

whiteness

Robert P Baird
The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea

Before the 17th century, people did not think of themselves as belonging to something called the white race. But once the idea was invented, it quickly began to reshape the modern world.

gellner 1

Brendan O'Leary
Ernest Gellner’s diagnoses of nationalism: a critical overview, or, what is living and what is dead in Ernest Gellner’s philosophy of nationalism?’

This chapter seeks to provide a preliminary posthumous analysis of Gellner’s legacy. It needs little justification since all worthwhile subsequent writing and research on nationalism will benefit from Gellner’s work, whether they build on his presumptions or dissent from them.

Donald-Trump-Coast-Guard

Bart Bonikowski
Nationalism in Settled Times

The mid 2010s have witnessed a resurgence of nationalist discourse in the United States, mirroring longer-term trends in the European public sphere. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have articulated visions of their nations under siege—by immigrants, refugees, domestic minority populations, and these groups’ ostensible accomplices among the political and cultural elites.

admin-ajax

Marlene Laruell
Russian Nationalism and Ukraine

Many public and private foundations and think tanks have sprung up around the Kremlin and the Putin-backing political party United Russia, producing nationalist rhetoric on demand. They capture public funds while their leaders try to build careers based on nationalist slogans, seeking to become advisers to the regime.

Christ-as-a-Muslim

William Safran
Language, ethnicity and religion: a complex and persistent linkage

Religious identity is based on, and perpetuated in, narratives expressed in a specific language. Language and religion are related; in our secular age, however, that relationship is no longer consistent. The two may feed upon one another; language may substitute for religion; or religion may trump language. This article explores the varying relationships between language and religion.

Zionism

Alexander H. Joffe
Zion as Proxy? Three Jewish Scholars of Nationalism on Zionism and Israel

This paper discusses the work of Kedourie, Gellner, and Hobsbawm and their attitudes toward Israel and Zionism. These are emblematic of their larger approaches to nationalism and the question of identity in the modem world.

Bosnian war

Bruno Gomes Guimarães
THE INTERNATIONAL DETERMINANTS OF THE BOSNIAN WAR

After Yugoslavia’s economic destabilization, foreign interference propelled the start of the war by making the belligerent groups in Bosnia confident because of their foreign support. Geopolitical interests were a determinant of the Bosnian War, which was characterized as an intractable ethnic conflict to hide political agendas at play.

the-liberty-leading-the-people-1830.jpg!Large

Jonathan M. Acuff
Modernity and Nationalism

This review essay surveys scholarly work from the nineteenth century to the present concerning the relationship between modernity and nationalism and its effects on how scholars view the constitutive and causal significance of nationalism for international politics.

religion_and_culture

Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd
Ethnicity and Religion

Is religiously-informed conflict distinctive in form and dynamics? Do specific religions incline towards specific forms of group identity and conflict? Are religiously-defined groups-in-conflict different from ethnic groups-in-conflict? How far does the historic sequencing of state-building, nation-building and confessionalisation affect the ways ethnicity and religion intersect?

macron modi

Ashok Swain
Hindu Nationalists Back Macron, Not on Free Speech but on Islamophobia

In the past six years under the Modi regime, India has become a world leader in lynching. A group that promotes and celebrates the lynching of people in the name of religious sentiments in its own country has no moral right to criticise the fanatics who kill in other countries in the name of defending their religion.

Center for Nationalism Studies Populism

Michaelangelo Anastasiou
The spatiotemporality of nationalist populism and the production of political subjectivities

While recent research has made progress in analytically disentangling “nationalism” from “populism”, the question that is left unanswered is why, from an empirical standpoint, populist movements typically impinge on national(ist) modalities.

Balkan-map-min

Pavlos Hatzopoulos
THE BALKANS BEYOND NATIONALISM AND IDENTITY

The Balkans have been rigidly associated with backwardness, with extraordinary violence, with incessant strife. These traits have also been projected back into the history of the region, as if it had nothing substantial to show but them. Nationalism has been posited as the central concept that organises these representations.

donald-trump-vladimir-putin-jt-170709_12x5_992

Matthew Crosston
Power Populism: The Battle between Putin, Trump, and the Liberal Elite

Rather than being a movement engineered against elite political insiders, populism in America and Russia currently seems to be occupied by very specific segments of elites in society. Ironically, these elites position themselves as the chosen representatives of the disenfranchised.

border

Dimitris Livanios
Making Borders, Unmaking Identities: Frontiers and Nationalism in the Balkans, 1774 – 1913

It appears that few things agitate the modern imagination more than the sight of a line on a piece of paper. A line, that is, that demarcates the ‘frontier’ (or should it be called ‘boundary’?) between ‘states’, ‘nations’, ‘continents’ or ‘civilisations’.

The_Assassination_of_Karadjordje,_1863._National_Museum,_Belgrade

Bobby Anderson
From Thieves to Nation-builders; the Nexus of Banditry, Insurgency and State-Building in the Balkans, 1804-2007

The varied chapters of the 1991-1999 Balkan wars were less about ethnicity than they were about economic redistribution and coercive accumulation—thinly veiled organised criminal activities with the sheltering veneer of primitivism, further concealed by the intentional encouragement of war’s view through a myopic prism of race, religion, and blood.

balkan folklore

Edited by Marko Čeperković and Florence Gaub. Contributions from Donika Emini, Zoran Nechev and Isidora Stakić
Balkan Futures: Three Scenarios for 2025

What will the Western Balkans look like in 2025? Will we witness Republika Srpska declare independence, a worsening of relations between Kosovo and Serbia, and the rise of ethnic tensions across the region – or will we celebrate Montenegro and Serbia joining the EU? This paper presents three contrasting scenarios for the horizon of 2025. (Read more…)

Poturčenjaci

Monika Skrzeszewska
The Influence of Islam on “Our Muslims” in Serbian Nationalistic Discourse

The Ottoman heritage is still perceptible in almost every social and cultural aspect in the Balkan Peninsula. One of the most significant Ottoman influence over that region is probably the confession of Islam. Some South Slavs converted to Islam under the authority of the Turkish Empire in the Balkans, therefore, Muslims, both ethnic Turks and Slavs, were denoted “Turks” (Turci) to show their connection with a regime based on the alien religion. (Read more…)

bosnia-mass-grave-with-dozens-of-victims-uncovered-1378497983-6182

Srđa Pavlović
Understanding Balkan Nationalism: The wrong people, in the wrong place, at the wrong time

It could be convincingly argued that during the past decade most nations that lived in the former
Yugoslavia – Bosnian Muslims and Serbs, Croats and Albanians, and others (to a lesser degree) –
as well as the members of the minority groups such as Roma, Goranci, Jews, Ukrainians and
others, have shared one common feature: EXODUS.

shohizinda-196893_1280

Galym Zhussipbek
Exclusivist Identities in Central Asia: Implications for Regional Stability and Cooperation

What are the sources of interethnic and inter-communal tensions in Central Asia? This chapter illuminated one of these sources, namely, the processes of constructing exclusivist identities in Central Asian states. Built at the state level and below, these exclusivist identities engender inter-communal peace and also undermine efforts at regional cooperation and integration. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies Liberte

Fredy Perlman
The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism

Leftist or revolutionary nationalists insist that their nationalism has nothing in common with the nationalism of fascists and national socialists, that theirs is a nationalism of the oppressed, that it offers personal as well as cultural liberation. (Read more…)

folklore food

Veronika Bajt
Who “Belongs”? Migration, Nationalism and National Identity in Slovenia

Nation-states have indeed been experiencing an erosion of sovereignty that has accelerated with processes of globalisation and the diffusion of power at sub- and supra-state levels; they remain, however, in strong control over the question of who belongs and who is consigned to the position of the foreigner. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies Balkan map

Benedict E. DeDominicis
Overcoming the Clash of Civilizations: EU Peace Strategies for Balkan Ethno-Sectarian Nationalist Conflicts

This study focuses on trends in relationships between Serb and Bulgarian ethno-sectarian majorities and their respective, Muslim minorities within a dynamic international systemic context. (…) Serbian nationalism continues to suffer setbacks along with the post Cold War decline of intensity of Great Power willingness to support it as an ally in Southeastern Europe. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies analysis Analysis Europe flag

Ruth Wodak & Salomi Boukala
European identities and the revival of nationalism in the European Union

Who is European and who is not? What values do Europeans share, and who is included in or excluded from the European community? (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies Analysis Nationalism Immigration Image

Eric Storm
A New Dawn in Nationalism Studies? Some Fresh Incentives to Overcome Historiographical Nationalism

The path-breaking views of Anderson, Gellner and Hobsbawm still form the starting point for almost all investigations. However, a number of highly original studies on the origins of nationalism, nation-state formation, banal nationalism, methodological nationalism and nation-building announce a new dawn. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies Analysis Taiwanese Nationalism

Simon Scott
Taiwan’s Mainlanders: A Diasporic Identity in Construction

As Taiwanese nationalism gains ascendancy over Chinese nationalism in Taiwanese society, Mainlanders are increasingly adopting a diasporic identity as Chinese in Taiwan. The labels and boundaries between ethnic groups are clearly related to the construction of a national identity on Taiwan; and need to be interrogated for the lessons they can teach us about the relationship between migration, decolonization, diasporas, and nationalism. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies Analysis American flags

Michal Luczewski
What Remains for Nationalism Studies?

After decades of unprecedented development in both nationalisms and nationalism studies, nationalists surprisingly have many more reasons to be satisfied than researchers. While nations and nationalism flourish, scholars seem analytically more and more confused. Although there are more articles, books, and journals on nations and nationalism than ever before, there is a growing sense of disappointment in the field. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies Analysis Banal Nationalism

Michael Skey
The national in everyday life: A critical engagement with Michael Billig’s thesis of Banal Nationalism

Billig’s major contribution is to identify the problem – a tendency to treat the nation as a given both in everyday life and social theory – and point towards its possible contours. Moreover, by exploring the everyday (re)production of national identity through banal signifiers, our attention is focused on the fact that it is generally the daily forms of life, lived in and understood in relation to a world of nations, that underpins the more visible (and sometimes virulent) aspects of nationalism. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Assimilation

Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos
Illiberal Means to Liberal Ends?

A number of European governments have pronounced multiculturalism a failure and opted for more aggressive means of integrating immigrants into their societies. Does it reflect deeply rooted illiberal prejudice or a novel shift in liberal-democratic states’ approaches to nation-building? (Read more…)

CNS Nationalism Studies analysis Nationalism and Religious Prejudice heads

Hilmi M. Zawati
Historicism, Nationalism, and Religious Prejudice

Religious affiliation emerged as a source of antagonism among the Yugoslav nations, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, after WWII. There is no doubt that the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda had religious dimensions, and that religion was manipulated by religious leaders who had successfully used it to augment the feelings of religious nationalism and ancient hatreds among different ethnic entities. (Read more…)

CNS Nationalism Studies analysis Astana picture

Donnacha O Beachain & Rob Kevlihan
Threading a needle: Kazakhstan between civic and ethno-nationalist state-building

The state‐building project in Kazakhstan: both civic and ethno‐nationalistic tendencies can be identified. The government has succeeded in managing these tensions at the policy level and in its relations with different ethnic groups and neighbouring states.(Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Peace Rocks

Lynn M. Tesser
Europe’s pivotal peace projects: ethnic separation and European integration

EU enlargement into Central and Eastern Europe often intensifies political debates deeply mired in the past. Yet, the collective memories enabling controversy are linked with a largely forgotten source: Western powers’ earlier stability strategy centered on the replacement of multinational empires with relatively homogeneous nation-states. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis European Islam girl with teddy bear

Xavier Bougarel
The role of Balkan Muslims in building a European Islam

A number of major socio-economic and cultural factors differentiate the Balkan Muslims from their fellow Muslims in the EU, including their commonality of language with other local non-Muslim populations. Also, the Balkan Muslims are part of a regional political context dominated by ethnic and religious nationalism. Confronted with the break-up of the Yugoslav Federation, the Balkan Muslims’ politicisation crystallised in distinct national and territorial claims. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis corona virus and Authoritarianism

Noam Chomsky
We Can’t Let COVID-19 Drive Us Into Authoritarianism

As the COVID-19 pandemic turns the global political and economic order on its head, societies facing the toll of the virus may collapse into authoritarianism. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis football fans

Robin Niblett
Managing the Rising Influence of Nationalism

There is an urgent need for global responses to a host of shared challenges, from climate change and technological disruption to financial imbalances. And yet, perversely, atavistic politics that seek to divide people are returning to the fore in democracies and autocracies alike. What is going on? The rise and fall and rise of nationalism. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Catalonia Barcelona fans

Jason Sorens
The Cross-Sectional Determinants of Secessionism in Advanced Democracies

What regions are more likely to support more successful secessionist parties? Using new data in cross-sectional regression analysis, the author finds that secessionism involves unique factors not common to other kinds of ethnic conflict. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Girls Indecision

Anna Stetsenko & Igor M. Arievitch
The Self in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory

This theory helps to theorize the self (a) in its practical relevance, as a lawful and necessary moment in human collective practices, (b) as endowed with the capacity to generate new cycles of practice, and (c) as immanent in activities that position individuals to contribute to meaningfully changing the world. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis nations flags

Katharyne Mitchell
Geographies of identity: the intimate cosmopolitan

A ‘cosmopolitan perspective’ starts with a global outlook and involves a critique of nation-based research formats (what he terms methodological nationalism), a recognition that we have
entered a new historical era, a so-called ‘age of cosmopolitanism’, and an assumption that scholars must now engage a new kind of theoretical framework based on a conception of ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies analysis What is Nationalism

Miroslav Hroch
The nation as the cradle of nationalism and patriotism

Why is having a positive relationship to one’s own nation nowadays always associated with the ‘extreme right’? The nation is a specifically European phenomenon, and one of the main reasons for this is that it originally took shape (and to the present day still exists) in two interrelated senses – or in other terms, on two interrelated levels: on the level of a large social community that exists in reality (it is a ‘sociological fact’) and on the level of an abstract community of (shared) cultural values. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Minorities in England

Michael Skey
A sense of where you belong in the world: national belonging, ontological security and the status of the ethnic majority in England

The significance of national forms of imagination and organisation has been increasingly questioned in an era of rapid globalisation. While theoretically stimulating, those who stress the importance of global mobility and sociability sometimes overlook what well-established, ‘‘thick’’ attachments to the nation offer to disparate individuals, notably in terms of anchoring subjectivity. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies white nationalist rally charlottesville violence

Rogers Brubaker & David D. Laitin
Ethnic and Nationalist Violence

Work on ethnic and nationalist violence has emerged from two largely nonintersecting literatures: studies of ethnic conflict and studies of political violence. Only recently have the former begun to attend to the dynamics of violence and the latter to the dynamics of ethnicization. (Read more…)

Nationalism studies analysis Key Notions

Rogers Brubaker
Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism

This article traces the contours of a comparative, global, crossdisciplinary, and multiparadigmatic field that construes ethnicity, race, and nationhood as a single integrated family of forms of cultural understanding, social organization, and political contestation. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Multicultural Harmony

Katharyne Mitchell
Geographies of identity: multiculturalism unplugged

State-sponsored multiculturalism is in retreat. At the same time assimilation is shedding its tarnished image and regaining its stature as a key conceptual and political tool. This incipient process of change is under way in numerous countries and in both academic and political spheres. How can we understand these trends? (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Identity Status

Philip Hammack
Narrative and the Cultural Psychology of Identity

This approach to the study of identity challenges personality and social psychologists to consider a cultural psychology framework that focuses on the relationship between master narratives and personal narratives of identity, recognizes the value of a developmental perspective, and uses ethnographic and idiographic methods. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Celtic

Michael Dietler
“Our Ancestors the Gauls”: Archaeology, Ethnic Nationalism, and the Manipulation of Celtic Identity in Modern Europe

Appeals to an ancient Celtic past have played and continue to play a number of important and often paradoxical roles in the ideological naturalization of modem political communities at several contradictory levels, including: (1) pan-European unity in the context of the evolving European Community, (2) nationalism within member states of that community, and (3) regional resistance to nationalist hegemony. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis political map ofEurope

Anssi Paasi
Europe as a Social Process and Discourse Considerations of Place, Boundaires and Identity

During the 1990s competing images emerged of what constitutes European identity, who belongs to it, and what are its internal and external boundaries. This has forced reflection on the links between state territoriality, and territorialities occurring on and between other spatial scales. (Read more…)

hqdefault

Siniša Malešević and Mark Haugaard (eds.)
Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Political Thought

Full PDF Full PDF

bosnian parliament

Ian O’Flynn and Didier Caluwaerts
Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies

There are many reasons why democracy is difficult in societies deeply divided along ethnic lines.

Klasična_gimnazija_Travnik0496

Snorre Standish Norheim
EDUCATION AT A STANDSTILL: How the Consociational School of Thought Has Perpetuated Ethnic Conflict in Post-War Bosnia

This study set out to explore why the consociational prescription to have cultural autonomy in education contributes to perpetuating ethnic conflict instead of conflict resolving, in post-war societies like Bosnia and Herzegovina.

139

Moran M. Mandelbaum
One state – one nation: the naturalisation of nation-state congruency in IR theory

This paper suggests that the notion of nation-state congruency has become a ‘leitmotif in International Relations (IR) theory, especially since the end of the Cold War. Congruent states are often constructed as the precursor of liberal democracy, peace, and modernity, while security in particular is discursively intertwined with nation-state congruency.

hqdefault

Moran M. Mandelbaum
The Gellnerian Modality Revisited: Towards a ‘Genealogy’ of Cultural Homogenization and Nation-State Congruency

This paper re-evaluates Ernest Gellner’s theory of nations and nationalism and particularly his conceptions of cultural homogenization and congruency.

whiteness

Robert P Baird
The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea

Before the 17th century, people did not think of themselves as belonging to something called the white race. But once the idea was invented, it quickly began to reshape the modern world.

gellner 1

Brendan O'Leary
Ernest Gellner’s diagnoses of nationalism: a critical overview, or, what is living and what is dead in Ernest Gellner’s philosophy of nationalism?’

This chapter seeks to provide a preliminary posthumous analysis of Gellner’s legacy. It needs little justification since all worthwhile subsequent writing and research on nationalism will benefit from Gellner’s work, whether they build on his presumptions or dissent from them.

Donald-Trump-Coast-Guard

Bart Bonikowski
Nationalism in Settled Times

The mid 2010s have witnessed a resurgence of nationalist discourse in the United States, mirroring longer-term trends in the European public sphere. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have articulated visions of their nations under siege—by immigrants, refugees, domestic minority populations, and these groups’ ostensible accomplices among the political and cultural elites.

admin-ajax

Marlene Laruell
Russian Nationalism and Ukraine

Many public and private foundations and think tanks have sprung up around the Kremlin and the Putin-backing political party United Russia, producing nationalist rhetoric on demand. They capture public funds while their leaders try to build careers based on nationalist slogans, seeking to become advisers to the regime.

Christ-as-a-Muslim

William Safran
Language, ethnicity and religion: a complex and persistent linkage

Religious identity is based on, and perpetuated in, narratives expressed in a specific language. Language and religion are related; in our secular age, however, that relationship is no longer consistent. The two may feed upon one another; language may substitute for religion; or religion may trump language. This article explores the varying relationships between language and religion.

Zionism

Alexander H. Joffe
Zion as Proxy? Three Jewish Scholars of Nationalism on Zionism and Israel

This paper discusses the work of Kedourie, Gellner, and Hobsbawm and their attitudes toward Israel and Zionism. These are emblematic of their larger approaches to nationalism and the question of identity in the modem world.

Bosnian war

Bruno Gomes Guimarães
THE INTERNATIONAL DETERMINANTS OF THE BOSNIAN WAR

After Yugoslavia’s economic destabilization, foreign interference propelled the start of the war by making the belligerent groups in Bosnia confident because of their foreign support. Geopolitical interests were a determinant of the Bosnian War, which was characterized as an intractable ethnic conflict to hide political agendas at play.

the-liberty-leading-the-people-1830.jpg!Large

Jonathan M. Acuff
Modernity and Nationalism

This review essay surveys scholarly work from the nineteenth century to the present concerning the relationship between modernity and nationalism and its effects on how scholars view the constitutive and causal significance of nationalism for international politics.

religion_and_culture

Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd
Ethnicity and Religion

Is religiously-informed conflict distinctive in form and dynamics? Do specific religions incline towards specific forms of group identity and conflict? Are religiously-defined groups-in-conflict different from ethnic groups-in-conflict? How far does the historic sequencing of state-building, nation-building and confessionalisation affect the ways ethnicity and religion intersect?

macron modi

Ashok Swain
Hindu Nationalists Back Macron, Not on Free Speech but on Islamophobia

In the past six years under the Modi regime, India has become a world leader in lynching. A group that promotes and celebrates the lynching of people in the name of religious sentiments in its own country has no moral right to criticise the fanatics who kill in other countries in the name of defending their religion.

Center for Nationalism Studies Populism

Michaelangelo Anastasiou
The spatiotemporality of nationalist populism and the production of political subjectivities

While recent research has made progress in analytically disentangling “nationalism” from “populism”, the question that is left unanswered is why, from an empirical standpoint, populist movements typically impinge on national(ist) modalities.

Balkan-map-min

Pavlos Hatzopoulos
THE BALKANS BEYOND NATIONALISM AND IDENTITY

The Balkans have been rigidly associated with backwardness, with extraordinary violence, with incessant strife. These traits have also been projected back into the history of the region, as if it had nothing substantial to show but them. Nationalism has been posited as the central concept that organises these representations.

donald-trump-vladimir-putin-jt-170709_12x5_992

Matthew Crosston
Power Populism: The Battle between Putin, Trump, and the Liberal Elite

Rather than being a movement engineered against elite political insiders, populism in America and Russia currently seems to be occupied by very specific segments of elites in society. Ironically, these elites position themselves as the chosen representatives of the disenfranchised.

border

Dimitris Livanios
Making Borders, Unmaking Identities: Frontiers and Nationalism in the Balkans, 1774 – 1913

It appears that few things agitate the modern imagination more than the sight of a line on a piece of paper. A line, that is, that demarcates the ‘frontier’ (or should it be called ‘boundary’?) between ‘states’, ‘nations’, ‘continents’ or ‘civilisations’.

The_Assassination_of_Karadjordje,_1863._National_Museum,_Belgrade

Bobby Anderson
From Thieves to Nation-builders; the Nexus of Banditry, Insurgency and State-Building in the Balkans, 1804-2007

The varied chapters of the 1991-1999 Balkan wars were less about ethnicity than they were about economic redistribution and coercive accumulation—thinly veiled organised criminal activities with the sheltering veneer of primitivism, further concealed by the intentional encouragement of war’s view through a myopic prism of race, religion, and blood.

balkan folklore

Edited by Marko Čeperković and Florence Gaub. Contributions from Donika Emini, Zoran Nechev and Isidora Stakić
Balkan Futures: Three Scenarios for 2025

What will the Western Balkans look like in 2025? Will we witness Republika Srpska declare independence, a worsening of relations between Kosovo and Serbia, and the rise of ethnic tensions across the region – or will we celebrate Montenegro and Serbia joining the EU? This paper presents three contrasting scenarios for the horizon of 2025. (Read more…)

Poturčenjaci

Monika Skrzeszewska
The Influence of Islam on “Our Muslims” in Serbian Nationalistic Discourse

The Ottoman heritage is still perceptible in almost every social and cultural aspect in the Balkan Peninsula. One of the most significant Ottoman influence over that region is probably the confession of Islam. Some South Slavs converted to Islam under the authority of the Turkish Empire in the Balkans, therefore, Muslims, both ethnic Turks and Slavs, were denoted “Turks” (Turci) to show their connection with a regime based on the alien religion. (Read more…)

bosnia-mass-grave-with-dozens-of-victims-uncovered-1378497983-6182

Srđa Pavlović
Understanding Balkan Nationalism: The wrong people, in the wrong place, at the wrong time

It could be convincingly argued that during the past decade most nations that lived in the former
Yugoslavia – Bosnian Muslims and Serbs, Croats and Albanians, and others (to a lesser degree) –
as well as the members of the minority groups such as Roma, Goranci, Jews, Ukrainians and
others, have shared one common feature: EXODUS.

shohizinda-196893_1280

Galym Zhussipbek
Exclusivist Identities in Central Asia: Implications for Regional Stability and Cooperation

What are the sources of interethnic and inter-communal tensions in Central Asia? This chapter illuminated one of these sources, namely, the processes of constructing exclusivist identities in Central Asian states. Built at the state level and below, these exclusivist identities engender inter-communal peace and also undermine efforts at regional cooperation and integration. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies Liberte

Fredy Perlman
The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism

Leftist or revolutionary nationalists insist that their nationalism has nothing in common with the nationalism of fascists and national socialists, that theirs is a nationalism of the oppressed, that it offers personal as well as cultural liberation. (Read more…)

folklore food

Veronika Bajt
Who “Belongs”? Migration, Nationalism and National Identity in Slovenia

Nation-states have indeed been experiencing an erosion of sovereignty that has accelerated with processes of globalisation and the diffusion of power at sub- and supra-state levels; they remain, however, in strong control over the question of who belongs and who is consigned to the position of the foreigner. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies Balkan map

Benedict E. DeDominicis
Overcoming the Clash of Civilizations: EU Peace Strategies for Balkan Ethno-Sectarian Nationalist Conflicts

This study focuses on trends in relationships between Serb and Bulgarian ethno-sectarian majorities and their respective, Muslim minorities within a dynamic international systemic context. (…) Serbian nationalism continues to suffer setbacks along with the post Cold War decline of intensity of Great Power willingness to support it as an ally in Southeastern Europe. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies analysis Analysis Europe flag

Ruth Wodak & Salomi Boukala
European identities and the revival of nationalism in the European Union

Who is European and who is not? What values do Europeans share, and who is included in or excluded from the European community? (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies Analysis Nationalism Immigration Image

Eric Storm
A New Dawn in Nationalism Studies? Some Fresh Incentives to Overcome Historiographical Nationalism

The path-breaking views of Anderson, Gellner and Hobsbawm still form the starting point for almost all investigations. However, a number of highly original studies on the origins of nationalism, nation-state formation, banal nationalism, methodological nationalism and nation-building announce a new dawn. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies Analysis Taiwanese Nationalism

Simon Scott
Taiwan’s Mainlanders: A Diasporic Identity in Construction

As Taiwanese nationalism gains ascendancy over Chinese nationalism in Taiwanese society, Mainlanders are increasingly adopting a diasporic identity as Chinese in Taiwan. The labels and boundaries between ethnic groups are clearly related to the construction of a national identity on Taiwan; and need to be interrogated for the lessons they can teach us about the relationship between migration, decolonization, diasporas, and nationalism. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies Analysis American flags

Michal Luczewski
What Remains for Nationalism Studies?

After decades of unprecedented development in both nationalisms and nationalism studies, nationalists surprisingly have many more reasons to be satisfied than researchers. While nations and nationalism flourish, scholars seem analytically more and more confused. Although there are more articles, books, and journals on nations and nationalism than ever before, there is a growing sense of disappointment in the field. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies Analysis Banal Nationalism

Michael Skey
The national in everyday life: A critical engagement with Michael Billig’s thesis of Banal Nationalism

Billig’s major contribution is to identify the problem – a tendency to treat the nation as a given both in everyday life and social theory – and point towards its possible contours. Moreover, by exploring the everyday (re)production of national identity through banal signifiers, our attention is focused on the fact that it is generally the daily forms of life, lived in and understood in relation to a world of nations, that underpins the more visible (and sometimes virulent) aspects of nationalism. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Assimilation

Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos
Illiberal Means to Liberal Ends?

A number of European governments have pronounced multiculturalism a failure and opted for more aggressive means of integrating immigrants into their societies. Does it reflect deeply rooted illiberal prejudice or a novel shift in liberal-democratic states’ approaches to nation-building? (Read more…)

CNS Nationalism Studies analysis Nationalism and Religious Prejudice heads

Hilmi M. Zawati
Historicism, Nationalism, and Religious Prejudice

Religious affiliation emerged as a source of antagonism among the Yugoslav nations, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, after WWII. There is no doubt that the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda had religious dimensions, and that religion was manipulated by religious leaders who had successfully used it to augment the feelings of religious nationalism and ancient hatreds among different ethnic entities. (Read more…)

CNS Nationalism Studies analysis Astana picture

Donnacha O Beachain & Rob Kevlihan
Threading a needle: Kazakhstan between civic and ethno-nationalist state-building

The state‐building project in Kazakhstan: both civic and ethno‐nationalistic tendencies can be identified. The government has succeeded in managing these tensions at the policy level and in its relations with different ethnic groups and neighbouring states.(Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Peace Rocks

Lynn M. Tesser
Europe’s pivotal peace projects: ethnic separation and European integration

EU enlargement into Central and Eastern Europe often intensifies political debates deeply mired in the past. Yet, the collective memories enabling controversy are linked with a largely forgotten source: Western powers’ earlier stability strategy centered on the replacement of multinational empires with relatively homogeneous nation-states. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis European Islam girl with teddy bear

Xavier Bougarel
The role of Balkan Muslims in building a European Islam

A number of major socio-economic and cultural factors differentiate the Balkan Muslims from their fellow Muslims in the EU, including their commonality of language with other local non-Muslim populations. Also, the Balkan Muslims are part of a regional political context dominated by ethnic and religious nationalism. Confronted with the break-up of the Yugoslav Federation, the Balkan Muslims’ politicisation crystallised in distinct national and territorial claims. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis corona virus and Authoritarianism

Noam Chomsky
We Can’t Let COVID-19 Drive Us Into Authoritarianism

As the COVID-19 pandemic turns the global political and economic order on its head, societies facing the toll of the virus may collapse into authoritarianism. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis football fans

Robin Niblett
Managing the Rising Influence of Nationalism

There is an urgent need for global responses to a host of shared challenges, from climate change and technological disruption to financial imbalances. And yet, perversely, atavistic politics that seek to divide people are returning to the fore in democracies and autocracies alike. What is going on? The rise and fall and rise of nationalism. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Catalonia Barcelona fans

Jason Sorens
The Cross-Sectional Determinants of Secessionism in Advanced Democracies

What regions are more likely to support more successful secessionist parties? Using new data in cross-sectional regression analysis, the author finds that secessionism involves unique factors not common to other kinds of ethnic conflict. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Girls Indecision

Anna Stetsenko & Igor M. Arievitch
The Self in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory

This theory helps to theorize the self (a) in its practical relevance, as a lawful and necessary moment in human collective practices, (b) as endowed with the capacity to generate new cycles of practice, and (c) as immanent in activities that position individuals to contribute to meaningfully changing the world. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis nations flags

Katharyne Mitchell
Geographies of identity: the intimate cosmopolitan

A ‘cosmopolitan perspective’ starts with a global outlook and involves a critique of nation-based research formats (what he terms methodological nationalism), a recognition that we have
entered a new historical era, a so-called ‘age of cosmopolitanism’, and an assumption that scholars must now engage a new kind of theoretical framework based on a conception of ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies analysis What is Nationalism

Miroslav Hroch
The nation as the cradle of nationalism and patriotism

Why is having a positive relationship to one’s own nation nowadays always associated with the ‘extreme right’? The nation is a specifically European phenomenon, and one of the main reasons for this is that it originally took shape (and to the present day still exists) in two interrelated senses – or in other terms, on two interrelated levels: on the level of a large social community that exists in reality (it is a ‘sociological fact’) and on the level of an abstract community of (shared) cultural values. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Minorities in England

Michael Skey
A sense of where you belong in the world: national belonging, ontological security and the status of the ethnic majority in England

The significance of national forms of imagination and organisation has been increasingly questioned in an era of rapid globalisation. While theoretically stimulating, those who stress the importance of global mobility and sociability sometimes overlook what well-established, ‘‘thick’’ attachments to the nation offer to disparate individuals, notably in terms of anchoring subjectivity. (Read more…)

CNS Center for Nationalism Studies white nationalist rally charlottesville violence

Rogers Brubaker & David D. Laitin
Ethnic and Nationalist Violence

Work on ethnic and nationalist violence has emerged from two largely nonintersecting literatures: studies of ethnic conflict and studies of political violence. Only recently have the former begun to attend to the dynamics of violence and the latter to the dynamics of ethnicization. (Read more…)

Nationalism studies analysis Key Notions

Rogers Brubaker
Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism

This article traces the contours of a comparative, global, crossdisciplinary, and multiparadigmatic field that construes ethnicity, race, and nationhood as a single integrated family of forms of cultural understanding, social organization, and political contestation. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Multicultural Harmony

Katharyne Mitchell
Geographies of identity: multiculturalism unplugged

State-sponsored multiculturalism is in retreat. At the same time assimilation is shedding its tarnished image and regaining its stature as a key conceptual and political tool. This incipient process of change is under way in numerous countries and in both academic and political spheres. How can we understand these trends? (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Identity Status

Philip Hammack
Narrative and the Cultural Psychology of Identity

This approach to the study of identity challenges personality and social psychologists to consider a cultural psychology framework that focuses on the relationship between master narratives and personal narratives of identity, recognizes the value of a developmental perspective, and uses ethnographic and idiographic methods. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis Celtic

Michael Dietler
“Our Ancestors the Gauls”: Archaeology, Ethnic Nationalism, and the Manipulation of Celtic Identity in Modern Europe

Appeals to an ancient Celtic past have played and continue to play a number of important and often paradoxical roles in the ideological naturalization of modem political communities at several contradictory levels, including: (1) pan-European unity in the context of the evolving European Community, (2) nationalism within member states of that community, and (3) regional resistance to nationalist hegemony. (Read more…)

Nationalism Studies analysis political map ofEurope

Anssi Paasi
Europe as a Social Process and Discourse Considerations of Place, Boundaires and Identity

During the 1990s competing images emerged of what constitutes European identity, who belongs to it, and what are its internal and external boundaries. This has forced reflection on the links between state territoriality, and territorialities occurring on and between other spatial scales. (Read more…)

Center for Nationalism Studies
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