Harris Mylonas and Maya Tudor, "Varieties of Nationalism: Communities, Narratives, Identities" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast

Nationalism has long been a normatively and empirically contested concept, associated with democratic revolutions and public goods provision, but also with xenophobia, genocide, and wars. Moving beyond facile distinctions between 'good' and 'bad' nationalisms, Varieties of Nationalism: Communities, Narratives, Identities (Cambridge University Press 2023) argues that nationalism is an empirically variegated ideology. Definitional disagreements, Eurocentric conceptualizations, and linear associations between ethnicity and nationalism have hampered our ability to synthesize insights. This book proposes that nationalism can be broken down productively into parts based on three key questions: 1. Does a nation exist? 2. How do national narratives vary? 3. When do national narratives matter? The answers to these questions generate five dimensions along which nationalism varies: elite fragmentation and popular fragmentation of national communities; ascriptiveness and thickness of national narratives; and salience of national identities.

Our guests are: Maya Tudor, who is an Associate Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. And Harris Mylonas, who is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).