Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community
Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community
Nationalism is one of modern history’s great surprises. How is it that the nation, a relatively old form of community, has risen to such prominence in an era so strongly identified with the individual? Bernard Yack argues that it is the inadequacy of our understanding of community—and especially the moral psychology that animates it—that has made this question so difficult to answer.
Yack develops a broader and more flexible theory of community and shows how to use it in the study of nations and nationalism. What makes nationalism such a powerful and morally problematic force in our lives is the interplay of old feelings of communal loyalty and relatively new beliefs about popular sovereignty. By uncovering this fraught relationship, Yack moves our understanding of nationalism beyond the oft-rehearsed debate between primordialists and modernists, those who exaggerate our loss of individuality and those who underestimate the depth of communal attachments.
A brilliant and compelling book, Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community sets out a revisionist conception of nationalism that cannot be ignored.
344 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2012
Philosophy: Philosophy of Society
Political Science: Political and Social Theory
Sociology: Social Change, Social Movements, Political Sociology
Reviews
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Part One
Chapter One. The Myth of the Civic Nation
Chapter Two. The Moral Psychology of Community
Chapter Three. What Then Is a Nation?
Chapter Four. The People, the Nation, and the Nation-State
Chapter Five. Legitimacy and Loyalty: Making Sense of Nationalism
Chapter Six. Popular Sovereignty and the Rise of Nationalism
Part Two
Introduction to Part Two
Chapter Seven. The Moral Value of Contingent Communities
Chapter Eight. National Loyalty and Liberal Principles
Chapter Nine. The Moral Problem with Nationalism
Chapter Ten. What’s Wrong with National Rights to Self-Determination
Chapter Eleven. Cosmopolitan Humility and Its Price
Chapter Twelve. Learning to Live with Nationalism
Conclusion
Index
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