Description
Book SynopsisLooking at nationalism, this title offers a defense of the nation as a protector of cultural difference and a catalyst for modernization. It reveals how nationalism enables people to defend their distinctive ways of life, to fight colonial oppression, and to build an independent society of citizens.
Trade Review"This is an exceptionally erudite and thoughtful book on one of the major subjects of our day—the future of the nation-state. Gregory Jusdanis offers a wide-ranging discussion of culture and nationalism that raises important questions for cultural critics, political theorists, and historians, among other readers."
—Barry S. Strauss, Cornell University"Thoughtful, balanced and urgent, Jusdanis's study acknowledges the double-edged nature of nationalism. It resists the wholesale rejection of nationalism that has become characteristic of an historically ill-informed, conceptually impoverished, and politically correct anti-nationalism. Drawing upon a range of disciplines and national histories, he offers a rich and flexible discourse of nationalism and its others."
—Khachig Tololyan, Wesleyan University"Gregory Jusdanis has written a provocative book that challenges the nearly universal opinion among cultural studies and postcolonial theorists that the nation-form must and should be overcome. Strongly critical of the presentist biases of much current writing on the nation, Jusdanis provides an historical theory essential to all those interested in a variety of important problems: the role of the intellectual in nation-building; the nation in the era of globalization; the nation in a post-colonial world; and the origins of nationalism. Daring and lucid at the same time,
The Necessary Nation is basic reading for scholars in all the humanistic and social science disciplines."
—Paul A. Bové, University of PittsburghTable of ContentsACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION 3 CHAPTER ONE On Nationalism 17 The Union of Nation and State 18 Nations as Self-Institutions 23 Emotional Attachments 28 Ancient Roots 36 National Integration 39 CHAPTER TWO The Autonomy of Culture? 44 Culture as a Totality 46 Culture as Way of Life 49 Absolute States and Religious Wars 52 Culture as Secondary Agent 55 Nationalism as a Reactive Force 58 The Chicken or the Egg? 65 CHAPTER THREE The Bastion of National Culture 71 Fortress Culture 77 National Culture in Aspiration 83 Intellectuals and Class Interest 86 The Perils of Comparisons 89 National Intellectuals 93 CHAPTER FOUR Progress and Belatedness 102 Being Late 105 Catching Up 108 Greece: Postcolonial Narratives 110 Of Backwardness and Change 114 The Greek Culture Wars 118 The Discovery of Tardiness 122 CHAPTER FIVE Political Nations 134 England 137 Canada 143 Brazil 148 Egypt 151 The United States 155 Civic Identity 162 CHAPTER SIX The End of Identities? 166 The Disconnecting of America 166 Of Two Multiculturalisms 169 Racial Panethnicities 177 Culture, Culture Everywhere 185 Does Globalization Spell the End? 192 CHAPTER SEVEN Federal Unions 197 Private Identities, Public Assimilation 201 Endless Diaspora 205 Liberal Nationalism 211 Federalism 215 REFERENCES 225 INDEX 259
