ABSTRACT
The present book builds on an approach that first received prominence in 1997 in a volume edited by Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, who assembled an array of individual studies shedding light on aspects of cultural and intellectual history as well as biography related to Arab nationalism, all within the framework of individual countries. It addresses the questions of if and in what ways this virtual pan-Arab community ever existed, transcending the borders of nation states, or to what extent local agendas actually confirmed borders and fissures, even if they were presented in the language of nationalism. In the case studies, Arab nationalism is not presented as a political agenda of unification and cooperation first of all, but rather with a focus on the roots, the establishment, and the evolution of imaginative, symbolic, or "lived" ties between people(s) who claimed to belong to an Arab national community.
