ABSTRACT
The modernist paradigm of nations and nationalism constitutes the most fruitful and comprehensive of the grand narratives in the field. It is also one of the last. It emerged in opposition to the older nationalist, or perennialist, paradigms. But, as in other fields of study in the social sciences, these kinds of allencompassing explanatory paradigm have been increasingly abandoned in favour of limited models and accounts of particular, usually contemporary, aspects of the study of nations and nationalism. Responding to specific cultural and political problems in specific areas of the world, scholars seek now to account for particular developments, rather than frame a perspective that takes in the whole sequence of processes and full range of phenomena that fall under the rubric of ‘nations and nationalism’.
