A Social Theory of the Nation-State: The Political Forms of Modernity Beyond Methodological Nationalism

by Chernilo; Daniel

• ISBN13: 9780415399142
• ISBN10: 0415399149
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-08-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

P EM A Social Theory of the Nation State /EM construes a novel and original social theory of the nation-state. It rejects nationalistic ways of thinking that take the nation-state for granted as much as globalist orthodoxy that speaks of its current and definitive decline. BR Its main aim is therefore to provide a renovated account of the nation-state's historical development and recent global challenges. It divides its reconstruction of the history of the nation-state into three periods: /P UL LI classical (K. Marx, M. Weber, E. Durkheim) /LI LI modernist (T. Parsons, R. Aron, R. Bendix, B. Moore) /LI LI cosmopolitan (M. Mann, E. Hobsbawm, U. Beck, M. Castells, N. Luhmann, J. Habermas). /LI /UL P For each phase, it introduces social theory's key views about the nation-state, its past, present and future. In so doing this book rejects 'methodological nationalism', the claim that the nation-state is the necessary representation of the modern society, because it is unable to capture therichness of social theory's intellectual canon as well as the nation-state's own problematic trajectory in modernity. Instead, via a strong conception of society and a subtler notion of the nation-state, EM A Social Theory of the Nation State /EM accounts for the 'opacity of the nation-state in modernity'. BR /P P /P

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction The opacity of the nation-state's position in modernity

The critique of methodological nationalism: A debate in two waves

A claim to universalism: Breaking the equation between the nation-state and society apart

Classical Social Theory

The rise of capitalism and the historical elusiveness of the nation-state

Politics and the sociological equivocations of the nation-state

Moral universalism and the normative ambiguity of the nation-state

Modernist Social Theory

The totalitarian threat to the nation-state

Industrialism and the historicity of the nation-state

Contemporary Social Theory

Classes, nations and different conceptions of the nation-state

Globalisation and the 'definitive' decline of the nation-state

World society, cosmopolitanism and the nation-state Closing remarks

Bibliography

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