Globalisation, fragmentation and the emergence of identity politics challenge the myth of the homogeneous nation-state. They also lend increasing importance to processes of national boundary construction. This article argues that the dichotomy of ethnic and civic nations which traditionally informs much of social science discourse on nations and nationalism is inadequate to analyse how nations distribute membership. The same is true of the Meineckean distinction between cultural and political nations. Both typologies fail to account for some actually existing types of national boundary construction and they suggest that, in any instance, the process of boundary construction is homogeneous, universal and generic. As a consequence of these shortcomings, the ethnic/civic dichotomy needs to be revised, by disentangling different organising principles at work in defining the boundaries of ethnic and civic nations: ancestry, race, culture and territory.

This research was conducted in 1993–4 in several peripheral kolkhoz villages in the north-west Belarus Grodno province, a religious (Catholic/Orthodox) and linguistic (Belarussian/Russian/Polish/Lithuanian) borderland. The members of the folk communities of this region conceive and categorise social reality differently than it is done by the members of a nationalised and urbanised society, according to religious, and not nation-state, criteria. People are divided by these criteria into natsyas, i.e. religious groups. There are two main natsyas: the Catholics (also called Poles) and the Orthodox (called Rus′ or Belarussians). The distinctive criterion for several natsyas is the language of a prayer: the Catholics pray in Polish and/or Lithuanian, the Orthodox in Old Church Slavonic and Russian. The terms Catholic natsya and Polish natsya (and similarly Orthodox natsya or Rus′ natsya) are synonymous. The language of everyday speech does not differentiate the natsyas; all the villagers speak Belarussian dialect or so called ‘plain language’.

The natsya, a concept specific of traditional folk societies, should not be confused with a ‘nation’, a political term of the modern world. None the less, the kolkhoz peasants of the region under study are confronted with a concept of ‘nation’. It results in a turmoil in their worldview and in confusion about their identity; what we see in the Belarussian villages is a process of change. The borderland where the material was collected seems an excellent field for the study of the process of the emergence of nations.

Equatorial Guinea is the only Spanish-speaking state in sub-Saharan Africa. Since independence in 1968 it has been ruled by the tyrant, Macías Nguema and then from 1979 by his nephew, Obiang Nguema. Over time, the fixed inherited colonial borders may have allowed for the emergence of a sense of national identity, constructed like a collage from different materials. The article explores how the ruling elite has summoned a number of discourses to help with the forging of the nation. The Hispanic link is claimed as an important component and an attempt has also been made to unite the various ethnic groups through a myth of common Bantu origins. The despotic rule of Macías may, surprisingly, have contributed to an emergent Equatoguinean identity by forcing people en masse to behave as they would not normally do, by the consequent shared memories of terror, and through the effects of forced population movements and the creation of a large diaspora.

Filipino women participated actively in the Philippine Revolution (1896–1902), performing a wide range of tasks essential to sustaining the revolutionary challenge against Spanish and American imperialism. Though largely omitted from mainstream histories of the nationalist revolution, women's involvement has been recorded in several marginalised texts. However, these texts have invariably used a limiting format based on presenting biographies of outstanding women. This article suggests an alternative approach, by situating the history of revolutionary Filipino women within a comparative framework. The article outlines key ideas of feminist writers who have analysed women's participation in nationalist struggles from an international perspective. Drawing on these ideas, some new approaches to women in the Philippine Revolution are suggested.

This article advances the argument that national cohesion cannot meaningfully be pursued in multiethnic African states in the absence of democracy. But in order for democracy to facilitate cohesion, it must have the capacity to address issues of unequal power relations among the competing groups and regulate the conflicts which ensue therefrom. The article discusses four dimensions of pluralist democracy which address this capacity: democratisation of the state, strengthening of regulatory and oversight institutions, civil society and promotion of cross-sectional affiliations in party politics. The contrasting experiences of South Africa and Nigeria are then used to illustrate the formidable obstacles to democratic national cohesion in multiethnic African states, and the efforts that have been made to overcome them.

Writers on nationalism have continued to use the distinction between civic and cultural nationalisms; and to suggest that the former has liberal connotations while the latter is intrinsically illiberal and authoritarian. This rests in part on the argument that the civic bond is rational and voluntaristic while the cultural bond is irrational and ascriptive; in part on the argument that the presence of the middle classes is conducive to liberal politics; and in part on the argument that cultural nationalism is illiberal because of its reactive origins. These arguments are critically examined, and then are reformulated to suggest that the liberalism or illiberalism of nationalism might not be related to its cultural or civic basis, but might depend both upon whether the class articulating the nationalism is marginalised or upwardly mobile; and upon whether the wider society becomes focused upon ressentiment in relation to threatening others, or on developing a self-generated identity.

Gershoni, Israel and Jankowski, James P. Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Sayigh, Yezid. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949–1993. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Jankowski, James and Gershoni, Israel (eds.) Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

The enormous volume of writing on nationalism in recent years has tended both to anticipate and reflect geopolitical events in the world. Neglected in the wake of the Second World War for which it was blamed by many, nationalism as a subject began to attract scholarly attention again in the early 1980s, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union made it a central focus for academics. Nowadays, the number of postgraduate courses, conferences, journals and books devoted to nationalism demonstrate how important and fashionable it has become.