Series Editor's Preface. Introduction by John Breuilly. Acknowledgements. 1. Definitions. State and nation. The nation. 2. Culture in Agrarian Society. Power and culture in the agro-literature society. The varieties of agrarian rulers. 3. Industrial Society. The society of perpetual growth. Social genetics. The age of universal high culture. 4. The Transition to an Age of Nationalism. A note on the weakness of nationalism. Wild and garden culture. 5. What is a Nation. The course of true nationalism never did run smooth. 6. Social Entropy and Equality in Industrial Society. Obstacles to entropy. Fissures and barriers. A diversity of focus. 7. A Typology of Nationalisms. The varieties of nationalist experience. Diaspora nationalism. 8. The Future of Nationalism. Industrial culture - one or many?. 9. Nationalism and Ideology. Who is for Nuremberg?. One nation, one state. 10. Conclusion. What is not being said. Summary. Select bibliography. Bilbliography of Ernest Gellner's writing: Ian Jarvie. Index

Nations and Nationalism

For thirty years Ben Kiernan has been deeply involved in the study of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in unearthing confidential documentation of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. His writings have transformed our understanding not only of twentieth-century Cambodia but also of the historical phenomenon of genocide. This new book--the first global history of genocide and extermination from ancient times--is among his most important achievements. Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin's mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides.

Ben Kiernan, “Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur”

(1995). The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 180-181.

The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union

This book provides a new legal-sociological account of contemporary democracy. It is based on a revision of standard positions in democratic theory, reflecting the impact of global legal norms on the institutions of national states. Chris Thornhill argues that the establishment of fully democratic, fully inclusive governance systems in national societies was generally impeded by inner-societal structural factors, and that inclusive patterns of democratic citizenship only evolved on the foundation of global legal norms that were consolidated after 1945. He claims that this process can be best understood through a transposition of key insights of classical legal sociology onto the form of global society. Extensive analysis of select case studies in different regions illustrate these claims. Thornhill offers a sociological theory of global law to explain contemporary processes of democratic integration and institutional formation, and contemporary constructions of citizenship and political rights. This title is also available as Open Access.

/pdf/the-sociology-of-law-and-the-global-transformation-of-hljmy7gpja.pdf

The Sociology of Law and the Global Transformation of Democracy

. The 1919 Versailles Peace Conference created new states in East Central Europe (ECE), but the imperfect implementation of the ‘one nation, one state’ formula resulted in more than twenty-five million ‘unassimilable’ minorities. With the introduction of majoritarian democracy, this gave rise to what we term ‘ethnic reversals’: ‘formally dominant majorities’ suffered status decline, while previously ‘minoritised majorities’ found new political powers. Accordingly, the 1919 Minorities Treaties sought to manage these ‘ethnic reversals’ by instituting a liberal minority rights regime that tried to create both ‘tolerant majorities’ and ‘loyal minorities’. While the Treaties reflected the influences of Anglo-American and Anglo-American Jewish elites – the most notable voices of liberalism in an age of ethnic homogenisation – we suggest that in contexts of historical diversity with little institutionalised liberalism, ‘ethnic reversals’ raise issues that cannot be resolved within liberal conceptions of minority rights that rely solely or primarily on cultural protections.

/pdf/tolerant-majorities-loyal-minorities-and-ethnic-reversals-3s5f60u5b3.pdf

Tolerant majorities, loyal minorities and ‘ethnic reversals’: constructing minority rights at Versailles 1919*

This article retrieves the ethnic roots that underlie a universalist class ideology. Focusing empirically on the emergence of Bolshevism, it provides biographical analysis of the Russian Revolution’s elite, finding that two‐thirds were ethnic minorities from across the Russian Empire. After exploring class and ethnicity as intersectional experiences of varying significance to the Bolsheviks' revolutionary politics, this article suggests that socialism’s class universalism found affinity with those seeking secularism in response to religious tensions, a universalist politics where ethnic violence and sectarianism were exclusionary, and an ethnically neutral and tolerant “imperial” imaginary where Russification and geopolitics were particularly threatening or imperial cultural frameworks predominated. The claim is made that socialism’s class universalism was as much a product of ethnic particularism as it was constituted by it.

/pdf/the-ethnic-roots-of-class-universalism-rethinking-the-ibm0kyycsl.pdf

The ethnic roots of class universalism: rethinking the "Russian" revolutionary elite.

Part I. Identity and Empire: 1. Reconceptualizing Bolshevism 2. Social identities and imperial rule Part II. Imperial Strategies and Routes to Radicalism in Contexts: 3. The Jewish Bolsheviks 4. The Polish and Lithuanian Bolsheviks 5. The Ukranian Bolsheviks 6. The Latvian Bolsheviks 7. The South Caucasian Bolsheviks 8. The Russian Bolsheviks.

The Bolsheviks and the Russian Empire

This article contributes to an understanding of the role of agency in a sociology of human rights by examining how a small group of individuals interpreted, defined, and instantiated ‘hard’ human r...

/pdf/putting-cruelty-first-interpreting-war-crimes-as-human-1mkyovhqn5.pdf

‘Putting Cruelty First’: Interpreting War Crimes as Human Rights Atrocities in US Policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article offers a contribution to the sociology of social science knowledge practices and expertise through the empirical lens of US nation building policies. Drawing on archival materials, including the State Department's Freedom of Information Act documents, and interviews with key policymakers we offer a comparative historical sociology of the US State Department as a site of nation building knowledge and expertise. In examining the evolving character of nation building expertise in three key moments across the twentieth century, we find that as nation building expertise and its attendant knowledge practices were redefined and institutionally relocated, the essential character of the expertise and data collection practices that were valorized shifted from social scientism in the 1910s to geopolitical empiricism in the 1940s to liberal legalism in the 1990s. This changing character of nation building knowledge practices at the State Department had an effect on the substance of US nation building policy.

/pdf/to-build-a-notion-us-state-department-nation-building-v415nk5jbn.pdf

Liliana Riga

Papers

Tolerant majorities, loyal minorities and ‘ethnic reversals’: constructing minority rights at Versailles 1919*

The ethnic roots of class universalism: rethinking the "Russian" revolutionary elite.

The Bolsheviks and the Russian Empire

‘Putting Cruelty First’: Interpreting War Crimes as Human Rights Atrocities in US Policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina

To Build a Notion: US State Department Nation Building Expertise and Postwar Settlements in 20th Century East Central Europe