While conflicts of class, ideology and political systems have receded in the post-Cold War world, divisions based on group identity--cultural, ethnic, religious, and national--have assumed new importance. From Bosnia to Belfast and Burundi, from California to Kazakhstan, the difficulty of defining and reconciling group identities, and relating them to state structures, has become one of the central problems of our time. In this book, leading scholars and writers have collaborated with Edward Mortimer to illuminate the issues of ethnic and national identity that have emerged as central to the politics of today’s world.

Edward Mortimer is Honorary Professor at Warwick University and Foreign Affairs Editor at the Financial Times, who has also acted as a Principal Advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Robert Fine is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Warwick.

Introduction--Edward Mortimer * On Ethnicity * The Making of Ethnicity: A Modest Defence of Primordialism--Robin Cohen * The Nature of Ethnicity: Lessons from Africa--Terence Ranger * On the Idea of the Nation * Adam's Navel: 'Primordialists' Versus 'Modernists'--Ernest Gellner * The Nation: Real or Imagined?--Anthony D. Smith * On National Identity * Gender, Nations and Nationalisms--Catherine Hall * The Elusive Cultural Community--Olivier Roy * National Identity in a Multicultural Society--Bhikhu Parekh * On National Self-Determination * The Right of Self-Determination--Danilo Turk * Beyond the Flawed Principle of National Self-Determination--Adam Roberts * Between Union and Separation: The Path of Conciliation--Gidon Gottlieb * Does a Nation Need a State? Reflections on Liberal Nationalism--Neil MacCormick * On Civic Nationalism * Benign Nationalism? The Possibilities of the Civic Ideal--Michael Ignatieff * Benign Nationalism? The Limits of the Civic Ideal--Robert Fine