Notions of Nationalism

Book excerpt: In recent years, following the end of the cold war and the relative simplicities of the bipolar confrontation, nationalism has re-emerged as a dominant force and ideology in our world. Everywhere, peoples who had been confined within the borders of countries with which they did not identify, and whose regimes they intensely disliked, have been seeking self-determination and democracy. Notions of Nationalism, as the title implies, is an open-minded exploration of a phenomenon that all of us need to understand. In this highly topical volume, a group of distinguished scholars explore various perspectives of nationalism theory, analysing and shedding light on the many differences between the forms of nationalism which make it difficult to elaborate any single, overarching theory. The contributors address various notions of nationalism from widely differing viewpoints, yet all share the basic premises that nationalism is not a self-evident phenomenon and that the need to understand it is urgent, since it is an inescapable component of contemporary identity and politics.