Review: A Century of Genocide, the Dark Side of Democracy
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200506000424 |
| Author | Rima Berns-McGown |
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
| Reviews |
| 1170 | International Journal | Autumn 2005 |
Scholarship on nationalism continues unabated.
The Shifting
Foundations of Modern Nation-States
is the product of a lecture series at the
University of British Columbia entitled “The myths of nations.” This volume
is a series of case studies, which is intended as a hypothesis-generating exer-
cise stimulated by in-depth analyses of the roots of contemporary national-
ism in a selected number of countries. Ramsay Cook considers a “post-
national” Canada, a condition thrust upon Canada by its internal diversity.
Other chapters look at the particular problems of national identity in Italy,
Hungary, republican France, the US, Germany, Russia, and Indonesia.
Benedict Anderson’s chapter on Indonesia demonstrates his masterly
knowledge of the development of the Indonesian
lingua franca
, as well as the
recent historical development of “Indonesian” as a national category. My
only quibble is with Frank Unger’s chapter on the myths of exceptionalism
in the United States. Unger ponders the absence of a mass-based socialist
party in that country,but does not consider Seymour Martin Lipset’s succinct
diagnosis—“no feudalism, no socialism”—published more than two
decades ago. This quibble aside, the volume is stimulating and accessible to
non-specialists in particular nationalisms. It is indeed likely to “create new
space for thinking about questions of nationhood” (6).
Paul Hamilton/Brock University
A CENTURY OF GENOCIDE
Utopias of Race and Nation
Eric D. Weitz
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 368pp, US$19.95 cloth (ISBN
0-691-00913-9)
THE DARK SIDE OF DEMOCRACY
Explaining Ethnic Cleansing
Michael Mann
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 580pp, $33.95 paper (0-521-
53854-8)
Eric Weitz and Michael Mann have both tackled among the most important
subjects of our time—why and under what conditions societies have turned
to genocide or ethnic cleansing.
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