Liah Greenfeld. Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Author Greenfeld is an eminent authority on the subject of nationalism. After receiving her doctoral degree from the Hebrew University specializing in sociology and social anthropology, she became an instructor in the United States, and currently is a professor at Boston University in sociology and political science. In tracing the rise of nationalism, Greenfeld employs an interdisciplinary approach that combines political science with sociology, mainly the theories of Max Weber. Using Weber's idea, Greenfeld views "modernity as defined by nationalism" rather than the other way around (p.18). She emphasizes that the book "belongs to the long tradition of sociological inquiry which seeks to understand the nature, and to account for the emergence, of modern society" (p.17). Her interest is the formation of national identity, not its execution.
Her major argument is that nationalism lies at the basis of the modern world. She defines nationalism as based on the idea of the "nation." "The specificity of nationalism, that which distinguishes nationality from other types of identity, derives from the fact that nationalism locates the source of individual identity within a 'people,'" leading to a "collective solidarity" (p.3).
Professor Greenfeld's aim in writing this book is a lofty one. "This book," she writes in the first sentence, "is an attempt to understand the world in which we live" (p.3). This generalized statement is backed up throughout the book by a wealth of scholarly material drawn largely from primary sources and theoretical descriptions. The central topics the book addresses are the emergence of nationalism, its changes from one society to another, and how it became institutionalized. To address these inquiries, Greenfeld divides her book into five chapters to analyze five major societies starting with En...