ABSTRACT
The original motivation to turn to the study of nationalism, which developed into a lifelong engagement, derived from a study of electoral politics in Cyprus in the early 1970s. Nationalism may move societies but it remains a morally outrageous doctrine. The work on nationalism in the Eastern Mediterranean to be outlined in what follows can be considered on three levels, defined by successively broadened contextualizations. As a consequence, it is a doctrine that very often turns against itself and can lead communities to self-destruction, as is very sadly illustrated, among innumerable other examples, by the experience of Cyprus in the twentieth century. “Honour and shame” was an influential approach in the 1960s, and some interesting work had been informed by it, but it was obvious that its explanatory power in political analysis was limited as it could be mostly operationalized as an interpretative tool in rural contexts and peasant communities.
