ABSTRACT
Vastly neglected until around twenty years ago, nationalism has become the pivotal theme in a number of scholarly, as well as popular, publications. In the wake of the Communist order’s dissolution, the number of published works on various aspects of nationalism has been steadily rising, turning into a sweeping tide and a fashionable industry. Walker Connor is one of the scholars of nationalism and ethnic conflict who has contributed most towards establishing a conceptual grounding for this emerging discipline. His pioneering work has tackled systematically the most relevant problems in the field, while identifying its primary fault lines and clarifying its key concepts. Connor’s prescience in forecasting current international developments is now widely acknowledged, making him one of the most quoted authors in the field over the past thirty years. In the 1970s and 1980s, when few dared to contemplate the underlying strength of nationalism and secession, he advanced some of the most challenging arguments in this direction. When fewer than a handful of savants indulged in writing on the resilience of ethnic roots, Connor was producing a set of seminal essays. Indicative of the continuing relevance of Connor’s contribution is the considerable output of new thinking on the subject that has recently emerged.
