ABSTRACT
This chapter is the first one in this book not devoted solely to an individual writer. From now on, in fact, all chapters will focus on a group of writers who roughly belong to the same generation and are concerned with some common themes in relation to understanding the nation-state. Raymond Aron, Barrington Moore and Reinhard Bendix represent part of the ‘sociological establishment’ between the 1950s and the 1970s and as they all devoted some explicit attention to the question of the nation-state’s position in modernity there is enough ground to focus on their works here.
