Collective Identities in Action: A Sociological Approach to Ethnicity

by Bernd Giesen, Oliver Schmidtke, Damian Tambini

This book analyzes the last decades of political science and sociological enquiry into ethnicity and nationalist politics and lays down a new theoretical basis for understanding the field. The authors accept the challenge of methodological individualism in social science, but criticize existing rational choice paradigms, arguing that we will only understand ethnic conflict through an enquiry into the links between micro-and macro-phenomena, and in particular by focusing on the conditions under which actors construct and negotiate social identities, including nations and ethnicities.

220 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003