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Nationalism and the Multination State

Online ISBN:
9780190638481
Print ISBN:
9780190607913
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Nationalism and the Multination State

Alain Dieckhoff
Alain Dieckhoff
French National Center for Scientific Research
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Published online:
19 January 2017
Published in print:
1 August 2017
Online ISBN:
9780190638481
Print ISBN:
9780190607913
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

Nationalism and the Multination State defends the idea that nationhood remains a central aspect of modernity. After the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the following decade confirmed this hypothesis with the rise of independence movements in Europe (in Scotland and Flanders) and the persistence of claims to nationhood the world over (for example, in Kurdistan and Tibet). A dual perspective informs Dieckhoff’s analysis: to understand the hidden social and cultural underpinnings of post-Cold War identity dynamics, from Kosovo to Catalonia and from Flanders to Corsica on the one hand, and to examine how societies can meet the challenge of national pluralism on the other. Finding liberalism, republicanism and multiculturalism unequal to this task, this book argues that only by building “‘multination”’ democratic states can the issues be properly addressed and secessions prevented. Contemporary liberal discourse often treats nationalism as an archaic aberration — as a primitive form of tribalism astray in the modern world. With examples ranging from Canada and the United States to South Africa and Western and Eastern European States and regions, Nationalism and the Multination State shows why nationalism is in fact a fundamental facet of modernity, which must be dealt with as such by states vulnerable to breakup.

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