ABSTRACT
Analysing nationalism The resurgence of nationalism in European socIetIes in the late twentieth century has revived all the old debates about its nature, its causes and its effects. There is a bewildering varieties of such theories but all share certain characteristics. They tend to aim at grand or universal explanations of a phenomenon so variegated as often to defy definition. Consequently, theories developed in one context often do not work elsewhere. There is a strong tendency to teleology, as though all social processes were headed in the same direction, whether to the consolidation of the nation-state or to its supercession. There was until recently an assumption that nationalist movements by definition must be seeking their own state. Finally, there is often a strong normative element in the discussion of the classic nineteenthcentury nation-state, seen as the essential basis for international order, democracy and social integration. The approach adopted in this chapter is rather different.
