ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the critical point where ethnic groups and nations meet, as countries with many and strongly motivated ethnic groups would tend to display a low level of national identity. The chapter argues that the concepts of ethnicity and national identity should be defined without legal characteristics. The distinction of ethnic community draws heavily upon European history and is based on a theory about how ethnic groups developed into nations in Western and Eastern Europe. In his Economy and Society Max Weber offered a few observations concerning ethnic groups and nations which are well worth reproducing here, as they are in line with postmodernist ideas. In order to understand the distinction between two kinds of nation that have played a major role in the theory of national identity, the chapter examines the so-called Renan model of the nation and citizenship, contrasting it with the so-called Herder approach to nationalism.
