ABSTRACT
The renaissance of nationalism in both Eastern and Western Europe and the consequences of ethnically-based semantics of difference in South-East Europe have caught sociology off-guard. Critics of the evolutionary elements in macrotheory point out that the expectations of increasing modernization have led to the belief that ethnonationalistic movements and social exclusions are premodern phenomena. The trend perspective in wide spheres of the sociological theory of society prevents an adequate understanding of the problem of contingency. Nationalism in its different variations proved to be an ideology which is extremely capable of integration. Nationalism was able to assimilate and legitimate power in both forms: in the form of a liberal definition and in the ethnonationalistic definition of the nation. Ethnicity and nationalism in their various forms of development represent inclusion and exclusion codes of epoch-making potential which have even influenced the modern age.
