Nationalism and Intra-State Conflicts in the Postcolonial World

Foreword by Moses Ochonu Contributions by Ali R. Abootalebi, Fonkem Achankeng University of Wisconsin O, Carlson Anyangwe, Alireza Asgharzadeh, Ofra Bengio, Chipamong Chowdhury, Michael Gunter, Lowell Gustafson Villanova University, Daniel Njoroge Karanja, Hassan Khannenje, J. P. Linstroth, Solomon Losha, Marie Olson Lounsbery, Tatah Mentan, Jacob Mundy, Klaus-Jurgen Nagel, Michael T. Ndemanu, Donald O. Omagu, Margaret Power, Ozum Yesiltas Edited by Fonkem Achankeng University of Wisconsin O

Hardback - £152.00

Publication date:

28 September 2015

Length of book:

568 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

236x162mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781498500258

This book highlights the complexities of nationalism and the struggles of different groups left unaddressed within the nation-states of a postcolonial world. The central question is what happened to the worldly and radical visions of freedom, liberty, and equality that animated intellectual activists and policy makers from Woodrow Wilson in the 1920s? This book analyzes the outcome of lumping disparate groups of people together under one nation-state and holding them together against the knowledge of the incompatibility theory of plural states. In a world of arbitrarily and colonially mapped sovereign states, groups, and nations with distinctive histories and cultures trapped within the borders of sovereign states want the freedom to decide their own destinies. This book challenges, deconstructs, and decolonizes Western epistemologies related to postcolonial state formation and maintenance. In examining the freedom concept that no human group ought to be determining the independence of other human groups, this book constructs an alternative conceptualization of nations and peoples’ rights in the twenty-first century, in which radical hopes and global dreams are recognized as central to internal nationalism struggles.
Intra-state ethnic conflict remains a topic of perennial interest, not least because most of the world’s states have ethnically diverse populations. Fonkem Achankeng’s volume presents both theoretical analyses of national conflicts in post-colonial contexts as well as a diverse collection studies from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The volume provides a valuable service to the comparative study of nationalism by emphasizing lesser-studied case studies whose peculiarities bring forth new perspectives.