The Shifting Foundations of Modern Nation-States

Extract

The Shifting Foundations of Modern Nation-States, Sima Godfrey and Frank Unger, eds., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004, pp. xi, 164.

The collapse of communism, the end of the cold war, and the seeming inevitability of what is euphemistically termed globalization have shifted the parameters of political discourse away from the traditional issues of economics and class or, as Harold Lasswell succinctly put it almost seven decades ago, who gets what, when, how. The new discourse focuses instead on the politics of identity and, whether one likes it or not, nationalism still occupies a very prominent place among the identities cherished by various groups of human beings. Thus the last fifteen years have seen a proliferation of books, articles, and conference papers devoted to the subject of nationalism, in Canada and elsewhere.