While nationalism is a term that is often associated with instability, violence, extremism, terrorism, wars and even genocide, in fact most forms of nationalism are nonviolent. Beyond politics, it is a set of discourses and practices that shape economic, social, legal, and cultural life all over the globe. This book explores the global rise and transformation of nationalism and analyses the organisational, ideological, and micro-interactional mechanisms that have made it the dominant way of life in the twenty-first century. In a series of case studies across time and space, the book zooms in on three key forms of lived experience: how nationalism operates as a multi-faceted meta-ideology, how national categories have become organisationally embedded in everyday practices and why nationalism has become the dominant form of modern subjectivity. The book is aimed at readers interested in understanding how nation-states and nationalisms have attained such influence in contemporary world.

‘This book offers an empirically grounded general theory of nationalism - something that studies of nationalism have been lacking and mourning the absence of. In providing such a theory and applying it to an impressive number of case studies across space and time, it constitutes a landmark and an indispensable piece of literature for everyone with an interest in nationalism. It is a crowning achievement of Siniša Malešević, confirming his position as a world-leading scholar in nationalism studies.’

Benedikte Brincker - Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen

‘While noting how historically new such sentiments may be, Siniša Malešević demonstrates that we are ALL nationalists and our attachments at most differ in degrees, but not in fundamental orientation. Focusing on rarely analysed cases, he shows us how deep our webs of national significance truly are and how much we are emotionally and cognitively caught in the nation state.’

Miguel A. Centeno - Department of Sociology, Princeton University

‘Siniša Malešević offers us a single, elegant and interlinked theory of nationalism to account for its shapeshifting forms across historical time and geographical space. Malešević stands alone in elaborating a comprehensive yet parsimonious approach to nationalism that captures it as a single integrated phenomenon.’

Jon Fox - Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, University of Bristol

‘Siniša Malešević’s brilliant new book argues that nationalism’s coercive-organisational capacity, and the political legitimacy conferred by its ideological grounding in the everyday, explain its strength and persistence in the modern era. Argued persuasively and across a wide empirical canvas, Malešević shows that, as nationalism has become a dominant way of life, nationalist subjectivity is now the dominant form of modern subjecthood. Grappling with the political and moral force of this claim could not be more urgent or more timely.’

Liliana Riga - School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh