Books on Nationalism
May 2001

Edited by
Prof. Rogers Brubaker, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Akzin, Benjamin: States and Nations
1966, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 214 pp.
An older but still valuable work, with considerable attention to Central Europe.

Anderson, Benedict: Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
1991 (first edition - 1983), London, Verso, 224 pp.
A highly influential study of national identity as a cultural phenomenon. Previous studies focussed on the social and political aspects of nationalism; Anderson examines the cultural processes which created national consciousness. Drawing on sources and examples from around the world, this concise book surveys the development of vernacular languages-of-state, changing conceptions of time, the interaction between capitalism and print, and the territorialization of religions. The second edition contains two new chapters.

Armstrong, John A.: Nations Before Nationalism
1982, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 411 pp. ISBN 0807815012
A fascinating study of pre-modern roots of nationhood in Eurasia.

Bendix, Reinhard: Nation-Building and Citizenship: Studies of Our Changing Social Order
1977, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 455 pp. ISBN 1560008903
A major work of comparative historical sociology.

Berding, Helmut, ed.: Nationales Bewusstsein und kollektive Identität
1994, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 615 pp., ISBN 3518287540
An excellent edited collection.

Billig, Michael: Banal Nationalism
1995, London: Sage, 200 pp., ISBN 0803975244
Considers everyday manifestations of nationalism from a broad, non-technical social psychological point of view.

Breuilly, John: Nationalism and the State.
1985, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,474 pp., ISBN 0226074145
An important work of comparative history

Brubaker, Rogers: Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany
1992, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 270 pp., ISBN 0674131789
Comparative historical account of the sharply differing ways in which citizenship was defined vis-Ă -vis immigrants in France and Germany.

Brubaker, Rogers: Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe
1996, New York: Cambridge University Press, 202 pp., ISBN 0521576490
Considers contemporary East European nationalisms and those of the interwar period.
The author attempts to create a conceptual apparatus to grapple with the massive reorganization of political space along national lines which has taken place in Europe since 1989. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu and the "new institutionalist" sociology, and comparing contemporary nationalisms with those of interwar Europe, Burbaker develops a framework based on interactions between three distinct dimensions of nationality: the autonomist nationalism of national minorities, the nationalism of the new "nationalizing" states, and transborder nationalisms of ethnically-defined "homelands".

Calhoun, Craig: Nationalism
1997, Buckingham: Open University Press, 164 pp., ISBN 0335193021
A short synthetic overview, taking account of recent cultural approaches to the study of nationalism.

Dann, Otto: Nation und Nationalismus in Deutschland 1770-1990
1994, München: C.H. Beck, 362 pp., ISBN 3406340865
An excellent recent history of nationhood and nationalism in Germany.

Deutsch, Karl.. Nationalism and Social Communication.
1953 [2^nd edition - 1969], Cambridge, MA: The Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 292pp.
Classic early social scientific study, still very much worth reading.

Eley, Geoff and Ronald G. Suny, eds.: Becoming National: A Reader
1996, New York: Oxford University Press, 518 pp., ISBN 0195096614
Useful anthology with an excellent introductory essay.

Eriksen, Thomas H.. Ethnicity and Nationalism : Anthropological Perspectives
1993, London, Pluto Press, 179 pp., ISBN 0745307019
Useful survey of anthropological approaches.

Gellner, Ernest: Nations and Nationalism
1983, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 150 pp., ISBN 0631130888
Remains the most powerful single theoretical account of nationalism.

Giesen, Bernhard, ed: Nationale und kulturelle Identität
1991, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 577 pp., ISBn 3518285408
An excellent edited collection.

Greenfeld, Liah: Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity
1992, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 581 pp., ISBN 0674603184
Wide-ranging comparative historical account, addressing England, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Handler, Richard: Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec
1988, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 217 pp., ISBN 0299115143
Includes useful methodological discussion cautioning social scientists against unwittingly reproducing nationalist ideology.

Michael Herzfeld: Cultural intimacy: social poetics in the nation-state
1997, New York: Routledge, 296 pp., ISBN 0415917786
Herzfield shows how anthropological approach may contribute to the study of nationalism by analyzing how high national culture is "domesticized" in everyday life.

Hobsbawm, Eric: Nations and Nationalism Since 1780
1990 [2^nd edition - 1992], Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 191 pp., ISBN 0521406781
Excellent survey from a leading historian; Hobsbawm's concluding appraisal of the phenomenon is colored by his own antipathy to nationalism.

Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger, eds: The Invention of Tradition
1983, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,320 pp., ISBn 0521437733
An important model for much constructivist work.

Horowitz, Donald L.: Ethnic Groups in Conflict
1985, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 697 pp., ISBn 0520058801
A magisterial work -- the single best and most comprehensive study of ethnic conflict.

Horowitz, Donald L.: Deadly Ethnic Riots
2001, Berkeley : University of California Press, 588 pp.
Another large and important book from Horowitz - sure to become a leading point of reference in discussions of ethnic violence.

Hroch, Miroslav: The social preconditions of national revival in Europe
1985. [Reprinted by Columbia University press, 2000], New York: Cambridge University Press, 220 pp., ISBN 0521228913
A pioneering work of comparative history.

Jenkins, Richard: Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Expirations
1997, London: Sage, 194 pp.
Usefully links anthropological and sociological perspectives on ethnicity.

Keating, Michael: Nations Against the State: The New Politics of Nationalism in Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland
1996, New York: St. Martin's Press, 260 pp., ISBN 0312158173
A useful comparative study of contemporary regional national movements.

Kohn, Hans: The Idea of Nationalism
1944 [2^nd edition - 1961], New York: Collier Books, 735 pp.
A classic work of intellectual history.

Laitin, David D: Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad
1998 , Ithaca, New York: Cornell University press, 417 pp., ISBN 0801434955
Fascinating mix of ethnography, historical sociology, game theory, and survey research by a leading political scientist

Laponce, J. A: Languages and Their Territories
1987, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 265 pp., ISBN 0802057039
An excellent study of linguistic, social and political aspects of bilingualism.

Meinecke, Friedrich: Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat: Studien zur Genesis des Deutschen Nationalstaates
1919, München and Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 483 pp.
Classic study of intellectual history

Rothschild, Joseph: East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars
1974 [2^nd edition - 1992], Seattle: University of Washington Press, 420 pp., ISBN 0295953578
Not a book on nationalism as such, but the best overall history of East Central Europe in the interwar period by a leading analyst of ethnicity and nationalism, and paying a great deal of attention to the "national question."

Rothschild, Joseph : Ethnopolitics: A Conceptual Framework
1981., New York: Columbia University Press, 290 pp.
An excellent overview, not about East Central Europe as such, but written by a leading specialist on the region.

Seton-Watson, Hugh: Nations and States
1977, Boulder, CO: Westview, 563 pp., ISBN 0416338208
Serious comparative history.

Smith, Anthony D: Theories of Nationalism
1983, 2nd ed. [originally published 1971] London: Gerald Duckworth & Company Limited, 350 pp., ISBN 084190846X
Sophisticated analysis of the literature on nationalism - still worth reading, even though the field has, of course, changed.

Smith, Anthony D: The Ethnic Origins of Nations
1986, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 312 pp., ISBN 0631161694
An influential work qualifying Gellner's strictly modernist theory of nationalism

Smith, Anthony D: Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism
1998, London: Routledge, 270 pp., ISBN 0415063418
A recent and accessible survey.

Sugar, Peter F., ed : Ethnic Diversity and Conflict in Eastern Europe
1980, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 553 pp., ISBN 0874362970
Excellent anthology of historically oriented accounts.

Szporluk, Roman: Communism and Nationalism: Karl Marx Versus Friedrich List
1988, New York: Oxford University Press, 307 pp., ISBN 0195051033
Sophisticated work of intellectual history.

Verdery, Katherine: National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu's Romania
1991, Berkeley: University of California Press, 406 pp., ISBN 0520072162
Verdery is both a leading anthropologist of Romania and a leading student of ethnicity and nationalism.

Weber, Eugen: Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914
1976 [2^nd edition - 1992], Stanford: Stanford University Press, 615 pp., ISBn 0804710139
A classic study of the social processes through which unified nations were formed

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