ABSTRACT
The dilemma of the Anglo-Irish in The Last September provides an illustration. If Sir Richard Naylor is British, then this is so because he has given his allegiance to Britain. It is, on this theory, the voluntary acts of individuals that confer upon them their national identities. Theorists frequently take it for granted that nations are social groups, or 'communities' as they generally refer to them. Cleaver's argument exemplifies a common type of criticism that can be leveled against societal nationalisms. Communities could be very different sorts of things, and to claim to constitute a nation because of constituting a community is, so far, to say very little. Such vagueness may suit the turn of nationalists in certain situations. Societal accounts regard a nation as a group characterized by social relations between its members, by virtue of which they have obligations of loyalty to each other, that is, as a community of a certain sort.
