Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com
Image from Google Jackets

Social theory of the nation state: political forms of modernity beyond methodological nationalism

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: London; Routledge; 2007Description: 193pISBN:
  • 9780415439930
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 320.101 CHE
Summary: A Social Theory of the Nation-State: the political forms of modernity beyond methodological nationalism, construes a novel and original social theory of the nation-state. It rejects nationalistic ways of thinking that take the nation-state for granted as much as globalist orthodoxy that speaks of its current and definitive decline. Its main aim is therefore to provide a renovated account of the nation-state’s historical development and recent global challenges via an analysis of the writings of key social theorists. This reconstruction of the history of the nation-state into three periods: classical (K. Marx, M. Weber, E. Durkheim) modernist (T. Parsons, R. Aron, R. Bendix, B. Moore) contemporary (M. Mann, E. Hobsbawm, U. Beck, M. Castells, N. Luhmann, J. Habermas) For each phase, it introduces social theory’s key views about the nation-state, its past, present and future. In so doing this book rejects methodological nationalism, the claim that the nation-state is the necessary representation of the modern society, because it misrepresents the nation-state’s own problematic trajectory in modernity. And methodological nationalism is also rejected because it is unable to capture the richness of social theory’s intellectual canon. Instead, via a strong conception of society and a subtler notion of the nation-state, A Social Theory of the Nation-State tries to account for the ‘opacity of the nation-state in modernity’.
Tags from this library: No tags from this library for this title. Log in to add tags.
Star ratings
    Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)



A Social Theory of the Nation-State: the political forms of modernity beyond methodological nationalism, construes a novel and original social theory of the nation-state. It rejects nationalistic ways of thinking that take the nation-state for granted as much as globalist orthodoxy that speaks of its current and definitive decline.

Its main aim is therefore to provide a renovated account of the nation-state’s historical development and recent global challenges via an analysis of the writings of key social theorists. This reconstruction of the history of the nation-state into three periods:

classical (K. Marx, M. Weber, E. Durkheim)
modernist (T. Parsons, R. Aron, R. Bendix, B. Moore)
contemporary (M. Mann, E. Hobsbawm, U. Beck, M. Castells, N. Luhmann, J. Habermas)

For each phase, it introduces social theory’s key views about the nation-state, its past, present and future. In so doing this book rejects methodological nationalism, the claim that the nation-state is the necessary representation of the modern society, because it misrepresents the nation-state’s own problematic trajectory in modernity. And methodological nationalism is also rejected because it is unable to capture the richness of social theory’s intellectual canon. Instead, via a strong conception of society and a subtler notion of the nation-state, A Social Theory of the Nation-State tries to account for the ‘opacity of the nation-state in modernity’.

There are no comments on this title.

to post a comment.

Powered by Koha