📗 Libro en inglés REIMAGINING THE NATION-STATE: THE CONTESTED TERRAINS OF NATION BUILDING

Traditional approaches to nationalism tend to exaggerate the antiquity of the nation-state while ignoring the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century origins of nation building in Western Europe and North America. Jim Mac Laughlin argues for a more grassroots, place-centered approach to understanding nation building. Mac Laughlin assesses competing models of nationalism and nation building in the works of key theorists such as Gellner, Hecter, and Nairn, and puts forward an alternative dialectical model grounded in historical and geographical specificity. Using Ireland as a case study, he locates Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism in a variety of clearly defined regional and social class contexts. Emphasizing the strategic and symbolic significance of "place," Mac Laughlin identifies certain areas as nationalist or unionist heartlands while others remain contested terrain over which both sides continue to disagree.