Nationalism Books - Page 5

The Jewish State: A Century Later, Updated With a New Preface

Alan Dowty

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Editorial Review:

As the fiftieth anniversary of Israeli statehood approaches, along with the commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the World Zionist Organization, the question of what is meant by a "Jewish" state is particularly timely. Alan Dowty takes on that question in a book that is admirable for its clarity and its comprehensive interpretation of the historical roots and contemporary functioning of Israel.
Israeli nationhood, democracy, and politics did not unfold in a social or political vacuum, but developed from power-sharing practices in pre-state Jewish communities in Palestine and in Eastern Europe. Dowty elucidates the broad cluster of cultural, historical, and ideological tenets which came to comprise Israel's contemporary political system. He demonstrates that such tenets were not arbitrary but in fact developed logically from Jewish political habits and the circumstances of time. Dowty illustrates how these traditions are balanced with those of ideology and modernization, and he provides an integrated, sophisticated analysis of the Israeli nation's formation and present state.
Dowty also proposes thoughtful answers to puzzles regarding the strengths and weaknesses of Israeli democracy in responding to the challenges of communal divisions, religious contention, the country's non-Jewish minority, and accommodation with the Palestinians. The Jewish State will be invaluable for anyone looking for that one book that gives an intelligent overview of both Israel today and of its origins.

Nationalism and Modernism

Prof Anth Smith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

excellent overview of theories of nationalism 5 out of 5 stars.
34 of 34 people found this review helpful.

This book by Anthony D. Smith, Professor of Ethnicity and Nationalism at the London School of Economics, is perhaps the best overview of the many theories of nationalism in one volume. As a sort of sequel to his first book, _Theories of Nationalism_, Smith summarizes each major theory and offers his critique. He spends a good amount of time on the seminal theories of Ernest Gellner and Elie Kedourie plus has significant sections on John Armstrong, Benedict Anderson, Michael Hechter, EJ Hobsbawm, Tom Nairn and many others, including himself. Each chapter is organized by theme, starting with the grand old men of sociology, Durkheim and Weber, moving through the modernists, primordalists, perennialists and ethno-symbolists before ending with the postmodernists. (If you've never heard of some of these distinctions before, Smith spells them out quite clearly and succintly in the conclusion.)

This book is thus valuable for all students of nationalism, even if you don't agree with Smith's critiques: his summaries alone make the book worthwhile.

Editorial Review:

This book represents a much-needed analytical survey of current theories of nationalism by one of the leading authorities in the field. It contextualizes the new insights into nationalism and its relationship with states and state-building on one hand, and ethnicity and ethnic revival on the other. Anthony Smith assesses the contributions of key figures in the field. Given the extent of nationalist and ethnic phenomena and the diversity of approaches which have been put forward, Smith's accessible account will prove an indispensable guide.

Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict - revised edition (International Security Readers)

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Editorial Review:

Most recent wars have been complex and bloody internal conflicts driven to a significant degree by nationalism and ethnic animosity. Since the end of the Cold War, dozens of wars—in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Somalia, the former Soviet Union, and elsewhere—have killed or displaced millions of people. Understanding and controlling these wars has become one of the most important and frustrating tasks for scholars and political leaders.

This revised and expanded edition of Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict contains essays from some of the world's leading analysts of nationalism, ethnic conflict, and internal war. The essays from the first edition have been updated and supplemented by analyses of recent conflicts and new research on the resolution of ethnic and civil wars.

The first part of the book addresses the roots of nationalistic and ethnic wars, focusing in particular on the former Yugoslavia. The second part assesses options for international action, including the use of force and the deployment of peacekeeping troops. The third part examines political challenges that often complicate attempts to prevent or end internal conflicts, including refugee flows and the special difficulties of resolving civil wars.

Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

one bit of testimony on this book's behalf 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Let There Be Night is a significant book in that it is one of the first to address the issue of light pollution. It does so through essays in a variety of styles, though many are memoirs or anecdotal in some way. Although the essays largely lack original titles, they come from notable nature writers. Most memorable to me are Kathleen Dean Moore's and Chet Raymo's pieces. What is valuable about this collection is that it allows the issue of light pollution and the value of night to be explored from many different points of view, from the scientific to the anecdotal. One theme that appears frequently is the value of darkness to the experience of childhood and to the biology of "our animal bodies," one of the sections of the book. Thus, the book gives a complete picture of the issue, and most of all a sense of hope. Unlike global warming, light pollution is an issue that is solved with the just flick a switch. Readers discouraged with by the immensity of other environmental problems will find themselves refreshed, renewed, and ready to take action against light pollution Let There Be Night.

Editorial Review:

 Twenty-nine writers, poets, scientists, and scholars testify on behalf of darkness and against light pollution’s diminishment of the night.

Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953-1991 (Russian Research Center Studies)

Yitzhak M. Brudny

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Editorial Review:

What caused the emergence of nationalist movements in many post-communist states? What role did communist regimes play in fostering these movements? Why have some been more successful than others? To address these questions, Yitzhak Brudny traces the Russian nationalist movement from its origins within the Russian intellectual elite of the 1950s to its institutionalization in electoral alliances, parliamentary factions, and political movements of the early 1990s.

Brudny argues that the rise of the Russian nationalist movement was a combined result of the reinvention of Russian national identity by a group of intellectuals, and the Communist Party's active support of this reinvention in order to gain greater political legitimacy. The author meticulously reconstructs the development of the Russian nationalist thought from Khrushchev to Yeltsin, as well as the nature of the Communist Party response to Russian nationalist ideas. Through analysis of major Russian literary, political, and historical writings, the recently-published memoirs of the Russian nationalist intellectuals and Communist Party officials, and documents discovered in the Communist Party archives, Brudny sheds new light on social, intellectual, and political origins of Russian nationalism, and emphasizes the importance of ideas in explaining the fate of the Russian nationalist movement during late communist and early post-communist periods.

(20070616)

Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe

Rogers Brubaker

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

somewhat unconnected and jargon-filled series of essays 3 out of 5 stars.
11 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Rogers Brubaker, Professor of Sociology at UCLA and part-time teacher at the Central European University in Budapest, has written six decent essays on nationalism here which don't really comprise a full book. Originally published in such journals as 'Daedalus' and 'Ethnic and Racial Studies', the essays present some interesting new concepts for the study of nationalism like 'nationalizing states' (a process which Benedict Anderson might call 'official nationalism') and 'homeland nationalism' (where a nation-state has significant numbers of its cultural community located outside its borders, i.e. Germany between the world wars and Russia today).

Yet Brubaker sometimes dips a bit much into jargon-filled sociological theory: for example, drawing from Pierre Bourdieu (who has a blurb on the back of the book), Brubaker defines a national minority as 'a dynamic political stance, or, more precisely, a family of related yet mutually competing stances.' Furthermore, he credits institutionalization too much for nationalism in the former USSR (i.e. Central Asia), calling nationalism a political phenomenon and thus not drawing enough attention to culture, language, religion, etc.

Nonetheless the essays are worth a quick read, especially the one comparing Weimar Germany and contemporary Russia.

Editorial Review:

Nationalism Reframed is a theoretically and historically informed study of nationalism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Rogers Brubaker develops an original account of the interlocking and opposed nationalisms of national minorities, the nationalizing states in which they live, and the external national homelands to which they are linked by external ties. He then analyzes contemporary nationalisms in historical and comparative perspective, tracing the parallels between the Eastern European nationalisms of today and those of the interwar period.

A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin

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For the Soviet Scholar 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the age of Lenin and Stalin is a compilation of scholarly articles from Russian professors, and edited by two distinguished Russian scholars Ronald Suny and Terry Martin who provide keen opening introductions. The work concentrates on non-Russian influence during the revolution, the transfer of Russia from an empire to a nation, the largely neglected area of multi-ethinicity during the revolution and Civil War, and transformation of society in the Lenin and Russian years. Suny and Martin divide this work into four sections - with the first two sections concentrating on topics such as national Identity, imperialism, fraternity, and Jadidism while the latter sections emphasize the importance of local politics, nationalizing Russian backwardness, nativization, Nation-building and Russification. In essence, each contributor or author gives a novel thesis, or at least expands a previously accepted scholarly premise, from the time shortly before the revolution to the age of Stalin.

Suny convincingly concludes in his introduction that "tsarist Russia failed to develop a strong, coherent, widely accepted national identify, autonomous from religious dynastic, or state identifications." (8) This premise sets the stage for the rest of the work, as Martin parallels Suny argument by spotlighting the Bolsheviks and their pursuit of national power. Martin's Affirmative Action argument refers "not only to programs on behalf of members of a given ethnic group but primarily to Soviet State support for the national territories, languages, elites, and identities of those ethnic groups." (78) This complex, and sometimes arduous argument, provides new insight into the diverse effects that ethnic groups and the Soviet State had with one another.

With a narrower focus, section two begins with a comprehensive study of family and fraternity, by Joshua Sanborn, who introduces an argument on the "multiethnic" nation. The key to Sanborn's argument is the role of soldiers, as he contends that "not only did the strongest and most consistent efforts to build the multiethnic nation come from the military, but it was also the military that latched upon family and fraternity as effective techniques to do so." (105) Expanding on this thesis - Peter Holquist takes a closer look at violence from the revolution to the age of Stalin. Holquist contends that the use of this coercion "discerns not a regime zig-zagging from on unrelated repression to the next [but] rather [that] sees a state continually seeking to sculpt and mold its population according to an applied science of society." (133) This "science" is also part of the revolution in Central Asia, as section two ends, Adeed Khalid, with a well-written essay about the nationalization of the revolution, illustrates the Bolshevik scheme for gaining Muslim nationalism from Central Asia. With a focus on Turks and Jadidists, Khalid convincingly argues that "naturalization of the revolution benefited from the alliance of the nationalists with the Bolsheviks." (159)

In section three, Daniel Schafer skillfully introduces Bashkortostan, a republic that was formed after the Russian revolution. In essence, Schafer argues that Bashkortostan is an example of a border and a republic negotiation. "Only in this way could the notion of national autonomy be coordinated with other imperatives of the day. (183). Doug Northrop expands this border argument to the actions of "the east," especially the ones which had conflicting meanings as he surmises that "the conflicting logic of constructing nationality and backwardness through the same symbol" meant distinct things to different audiences. (213) Northrop uses the wearing of veils by Uzbeks in his example, as the Soviets saw there use as "deviant," whereas the Uzbek's saw it as a national "identity" issue for their country.

In the final section, Matt Payne, correctly emphasizes the importance of nationalization in the Soviet regime. Essentially, Payne uses the Turksib to illustrate the "formation of social identities, class or ethnic, is the product of a complex and nuanced interaction among the state, social formations, and the individual." (242) Breaking down this new expansion even more, Peter Blitstein, concentrates on nation building and Russification. For instance, the school system in Russia becomes a major political issue. "The centralization and standardization of Russian instructors as far as possible was an important goal of officials." (266) As Russifying the school system became more important, so did the issue of nationalism. In the final essay David Bradenberger successfully explores the development of Russian nationalism (1941-1945), as a major priority in the Russian society. From party ideologies to war time propaganda, Bradenberger concludes that the "fading imperative of non-Russian propaganda and the heavy atmosphere of wartime Russocentrism meant that, by 1944, the position advanced by Pankratova [lead scholar of Russocentric ideology] and her allies lapsed into obsolescence." (288)

In conclusion, this work provides keen, and sometimes novel, insight into non-Russian influence during the revolution, Russia's transformation of nationalism and ideologies, and transmogrification of society in the Lenin and Russian years, and multi-ethinicity during the revolution and Civil War. Varying in their degree of reading fluidity, writing styles, and scholarly attributes; overall, the authors provide clear insights into Russia's struggle for national identity, their sometimes subtle, but always pertinent relations and developments with non-Russians such as Uzbeks and Turks, and their keen interpretations and insights into Russification and Russocentrism. Suny and Martin, skillfully lead, a thoughtful and well-researched, work which adds to the rich history of Russia. As the back cover notes, this work "is essential reading for students and scholars of Soviet history and politics, as well as those who study nationalism, comparative ethnicity, and imperialism."

Editorial Review:

This collected volume, edited by Ron Suny and Terry Martin, shows how the Soviet state managed to create a multiethnic empire in its early years, from the end of the Russian Revolution to the end of World War II. Bringing together the newest research on a wide geographic range, from Russia to Central Asia, this volume is essential reading for students and scholars of Soviet history and politics.

Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11

Joan Didion

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Oh see what we cannot say 5 out of 5 stars.
40 of 45 people found this review helpful.

What has happened to freedom of speech in America? Why are we not publicly and openly debating the self-serving and undeomocratic policies of the Bush administration? Didion, in another fine essay on American life, asks these questions and tries to answer them. This is a fine book for anyone who worries about our nation proceeding out of control in its war for oil and corporate interests. Didion is clear in her concerns about why we have lost our powers of free speech and citizenship. A must read for anyone who cares about this nation.

Editorial Review:

Novelist and essayist Joan Didion writes about the refusal of Americans to openly discuss and debate the Bush administration's new unilateralism toward both domestic and international policies since 9/11. This provocative and persuasive essay was originally published in The New York Review of Books, and garnered a tremendous response from the magazine's readers. In a preface commissioned for this book edition, Frank Rich, the popular op-ed columnist for The New York Times, echoes her argument with his own passionate analysis. Fixed Ideas is an incisive, timely political commentary from an American virtuoso.

Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past (Volume I - Conflicts and Divisions)

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Editorial Review:

Volume 1: Winner of the 1996 French-American Foundation Translation Award Offers the best essays from the acclaimed collection originally published in French. This monumental work examines how and why events and figures become a part of a people's collective memory, how rewriting history can forge new paradigms of cultural identity, and how the meaning attached to an event can become as significant as the event itself.

Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity

Liah Greenfeld

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Editorial Review:

Nationalism is a movement and a state of mind that brings together national identity, consciousness, and collectivities. It accomplished the great transformation from the old order to modernity; it placed imagination above production, distribution, and exchange; and it altered the nature of power over people and territories that shapes and directs the social and political world. A five-country study that spans five hundred years, this historically oriented work in sociology bids well to replace all previous works on the subject. The theme, simple yet complex, suggests that England was the front-runner, with its earliest sense of selfconscious nationalism and its pragmatic ways; it utilized existing institutions while transforming itself. The Americans followed, with no formed institutions to impede them. France, Germany, and Russia took the same, now marked, path, modifying nationalism in the process.

Nationalism/title> is based on empirical data in four languages--legal documents; period dictionaries; memoirs; correspondence; literary works; theological, political, and philosophical writings; biographies; statistics; and histories. Nowhere else is the complex interaction of structural, cultural, and psychological factors so thoroughly explained. Nowhere else are concepts like identity, anomie, and elites brought so refreshingly to life.