A Social Theory of the Nation-State: The Political Forms of Modernity beyond Methodological Nationalism

A Social Theory of the Nation State 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. It divides its 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) cosmopolitan (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 is unable to capture the richness ofsocial theory?s intellectual canon as well as the nation-state?s own problematic trajectory in modernity. Instead, via a strong conception of society and a subtler notion of the nation-state, A Social Theory of the Nation State accounts for the ?opacity of the nation-state in modernity?.