ABSTRACT
The upsurge of ethnic and ethno-regional conflict means that we need to reassess our understanding of nationalism. It had been widely assumed that the capacities of established nation-states were strong enough to resist challenge from their peripheries and minorities, but it has suddenly become conventional wisdom to assert their fragility and in some cases their demise. Nation-states which used to be regularly described as assimilated (or at least assimilating) cultural communities, integrated socio-economic communities, and sovereign political communities, are now regularly portrayed as struggling unequally with the realities of cultural pluralism, economic globalisation, and competing sovereignties.
