ABSTRACT
It is a premise of this chapter that neither ‘national’ nor ‘ethnic’ identity is a natural or inherent characteristic of human communities. Rather, they are constructed in specific places in a process of historical development according to the needs of leading political forces (Breuilly 1985; Gurritxaga 1988; Keating 1988). This is not to say that national or ethnic identity can be created at will. There need to be tangible makers of community identity which can be pressed to the service of the national project. These may be linguistic, racial, geographical, institutional, economic or social. There is also usually a common history, though this itself is frequently a fabrication. It is less a history, indeed, which is needed for the nationalist project than a set of myths, beliefs about a people whose force and significance is largely independent of their truth or falsehood. Given that linguistic, racial, geographical, and historical differences abound in the modern world, though, the question remains as to why these are pressed into the service of nationalist, separatist or ‘ethnic’ politics at some times and places and not at others. Further questions arise as to the content of nationalist or ethnic politics and its project in relation to the state; and about the management of the issue by the state itself.
