Political Culture and the Making of Modern Nation-States [Hardcover]

This book focuses on transformations of political culture from times past to future-present. It defines the meaning of political culture and explores the cultural values and institutions of kinship communities and dynastic intermediaries, including chiefdoms and early states. It systematically examines the rise and gradual universalization of modern sovereign nation-states. Contemporary debates concerning nationality, nationalism, citizenship, and hyphenated identities are engaged. The authors recount the making of political culture in the American nation-state and look at the processes of internal colonialism in the American experience, examining how major ethnic, sectarian, racial, and other distinctions arose and congealed into social and cultural categories. The book concludes with a study of the Holocaust, genocide, crimes against humanity, and the political cultures of violation in post-colonial Rwanda and in racialized ethno-political conflicts in various parts of the world. Struggles over legitimacy in nation-building and state-building are at the heart of this new take on the important role of political culture.

Part 1-Transformations of Political Culture From Times Past to Future Present
1. Political Culture
2. Kinship Communities as Political Cultures
3. Dynastic Intermediaries: Culture and Governance between Kinship and States
4. Modern Sovereign Nation-States: Nationality, Citizenship, and Hyphenated Identities

Part II-The Making of the Political Culture of the American Nation-State
5. Internal Colonialism and the American Experience
6. Groups as Identity Objects in American Political Culture

Part III-Global Colonialism and The Making of the Modern Nation-State
7. Colonialist and Post-Colonial Political Culture
8. Ethno-Political Violence and Sub-National Conflict

Part IV-The Holocaust, Genocide and Crimes Agl³