ABSTRACT
An important secondary idea in Arjun Appadurai’s Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization is that the nation-state is in crisis. He argues that this crisis is best understood through its cultural dimensions. Culturalism is a related form of identity-building taking place at the level of the nation-state. Nations are composed of people with different ethnic identities, but governments promote the idea of the nation as made up of fixed categories of people. Appadurai links culturalism to the problem of ethnic violence. However, his insightful discussions of ethnic violence in Modernity at Large were eclipsed by his core arguments about modernity and global cultural flows. Appadurai argues that culturalism is the primary form that cultural differences tend to take and represents a major challenge to the stability of the nation-state. Appadurai argues against more prevalent theories of ethnic identity as natural or primordial, instead showing that ethnicity is constructed as a localized response to global cultural forces.
