Globalisation of Nationalism: The Motive-Force Behind Twenty-First Century Politics

by Liah Greenfeld (Editor)

Organised as an experiment testing the hypothesis that behind the hottest political issues of the quarter-century after the Cold War lies globalisation of national consciousness, this collection of essays unites authors from the four corners of the world. They focus on democratisation and its failure in Russia, transformations of identity in Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, North and South America, and South-East Asia, the rise of militant and political Islam, and the eruption of China onto the world stage. The volume makes the argument that globalisation we are witnessing is, for the most part, the globalisation of competitive and antagonistic nationalism, which spreads to areas where it was not known earlier and into the sphere of religion, ostensibly indifferent to it. Collectively, these essays prove that nationalism remains the organising principle of politics inside nations as well as at transnational and international levels.

328 pages, Hardcover

Published September 19, 2016

About the author

Called “one of the most original thinkers of the current period” and “the great historian of Nationalism,” Liah Greenfeld is University Professor and Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Anthropology at Boston University. She is the author of “Mind, Modernity, Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience” (Harvard University Press, 2013) and other books about modern society and culture, including the ground-breaking “Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity” (Harvard University Press, 1992) and “The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth (Harvard University Press, 2001; Donald Kagan Best Book in European History Prize). Greenfeld has been the Distinguished Adjunct Professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong and a recipient of the UAB Ireland Distinguished Visiting Scholar Award, fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C., the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, Israel, and grants from Mellon, Olin, Earhart, The National Council for Soviet & East European Research, and The German Marshall Fund of the United States. In 2004, she delivered the Gellner Lecture at the London School of Economics on the subject of "Nationalism and the Mind," launching the research connecting her previous work on modern culture to a new perspective on mental illness.