Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe (Paperback, New)

The resilience of nationalism in contemporary Europe may seem paradoxical at a time when the nation state is widely seen as being 'in decline'. Why should so many movements across the continent be seeking to preserve or replicate a mode of political organisation whose efficacy and legitimacy is increasingly open to doubt? Challenged from above by the supranational imperatives of globalism and from below by the complex pluralism of modern societies, less and less are able to 'deliver the goods' in terms of policy or to provide the primary focus for social identity, the nation state faces an uncertain future.
This book examines the many manifestations of this ambivalent process across Europe, focusing both on the specifics of national identity in individual countries and on the external forces that are shaping contemporary perceptions and reactions - economic globalisation and European supranationalism, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Eastern bloc, mass migratory movements and North-South tensions. In this wider context, the resurgence of nationalism appears less like a paradox than like an 'epiphenomenon' of the crisis of nation-state structures, more virulent in the disintegrating state formations of Eastern Europe but equally visible in the introspective national self-doubt afflicting many West European states in the 'new world order'. The quest for identity and meaning in a world dominated by market consumerism and bereft of alternative social models may all too easily find consolation in chauvinsim and ethnic nationalism.
Drawing on this global perspective, Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe offers a rich analysis of the 'national question' in nine major European countries. It reaffirms the point that, like all forms of social identity, 'nation' is an ideological construct and that 'nationalism' is a distinctly political programme. They are not timeless 'natural' phenomena, but they neither are they 'fated' to disappear. Their future will be determined in the political arena.