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.

A perennial subject for sociologists, nationalism, the focus of this study, is persistent, not merely because of its specific ideological appeal, but because it expresses some of the major conflicts in Western social development.

"The social sciences have long been based upon contrasts drawn between the 'militaristic' societies of the past, and the 'capitalist' or 'industrial' societies of the present. But how valid are such contrasts, given that the current era is one stamped by the impact of war and by the intensive development of sophisticated weaponry? In setting out to address this and similar questions, this book investigates issues that have been substantially neglected by those working in sociology and social theory. Anthony Giddens offers a sociological analysis of the nature of the modern nation-state and its association with the means of waging war. His analysis is connected in a detailed way to problems that have traditionally preoccupied sociologists - the impact of capitalism and industrialism upon social development in the modern period. The result is a theory both of the institutional parameters of modernity and of the nature of international relations."--Provided by publisher

A new perspective on how the nation-state emerged and proliferated across the globe, accompanied by a wave of wars. Andreas Wimmer explores these historical developments using social science techniques of analysis and datasets that cover the entire modern world.

State sovereignty is an inherently social construct. The modern state system is not based on some timeless principle of sovereignty, but on the production of a normative conception that links authority, territory, population, and recognition in a unique way, and in a particular place (the state). The unique contribution of this book is to describe and illustrate the practices that have produced various sovereign ideals and resistances to them. The contributors analyze how the components of state sovereignty are socially constructed and combined in specific historical contexts.

This volume strives to establish a new agenda for methodologies in the social sciences, summarizing the most important research strategies developed in the social sciences since the early globalization and transnationalization studies of the 1980s and 1990s - namely, the cosmopolitican approach, the transnational lens, the scalar approach, and global and multi-sited ethnography. The contributions go beyond the early criticisms of methodological nationalism, providing insights into new strategies and illustrating how scholars apply these research strategies in different fields such as migration research and social anthropology. Analyzing the advantages and lacunae of new research strategies helps both to outline general methodological directions and to provide helpful guides for empirical analysis.

It is time to consider changes in the field of comparative-historical sociology, as the discipline seeks to accommodate old and new trends as well as the transforming spatial scales in which political power and social theory are increasingly embedded. This title showcases articles that pursue similar themes.

The Handbook presents a most updated and comprehensive exploration of social movement research. It not only maps, but also expands the field of social movement studies, taking stock of recent developments in cognate areas of studies, within and beyond sociology and political science. While structured around traditional social movement concepts, each section combines the mapping of the state of the art with attempts to broaden our knowledge of social movements beyond classic theoretical agendas, and to identify the contribution that social movement studies can give to other fields of knowledge.

An exceptional set of scholars assess every aspect of the most influential theory of nationalism.