ABSTRACT
Nationalism at the state level appeals to liberals today first and foremost as a strategy for enhancing stability and unity in states that might otherwise fragment along regional, ethno-cultural or even class lines.1 The basic idea here is that national identity is the best form of social cement in modern societies and ‘the precondition for achieving political aims such as social justice and deliberative democracy’. National identity is never just a given, never just a ‘diffuse, taken-forgranted cultural matrix, something one acquires simply by living in a place, breathing the air, being exposed to particular ways of doing things’. National identities are the intended and unintended product of intellectual, political and cultural activity, including the public discourses structured by political leaders and the narratives and sentiments fostered by state institutions such as schools, the army and broadcast authorities. I shall refer to these activities which intend to (or could be predicted to) shape people’s national identities as, variously, ‘nation-building’, ‘nation-shaping’ or ‘national engineering’.
