When is a Nation

Abstract The dominant perspective on nationalism in history and the social sciences is one that treats nations as modern constructs, the products of the new conditions that have changed the world since the Enlightenment and the French and American revolutions. But modernist views are decidedly ethnocentric; they are also as theoretically problematic and historically questionable as the perennialist perspective which they supplanted. An alternative 'ethno-symbolic' approach reveals the various forms of the nation in history, and seeks to supplement the rather linear historical question, 'when is the nation?', with the more recurrent and sociological problem of 'when is a nation?'. The latter question invites us to delineate different starting points and patterns of nation-formation in terms of ideal-type constructs, while an emphasis on the role of ethnic myths, memories, symbols and traditions helps us to explore the processes and routes by which nations are formed in different epochs and continents. By taking more subjective features into account, an 'ethno-symbolic' approach also reveals the tentative nature of such an exploration and the extent to which the category of the nation is subject to different, and often conflicting, interpretations by members, outsiders and analysts.