Grounds for Difference

Rogers Brubaker

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780674975453, 9780674743960
• eBook ISBN: 9780674425293
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Offering fresh perspectives on perennial questions of ethnicity, race, nationalism, and religion, Rogers Brubaker makes manifest the forces that shape the politics of diversity and multiculturalism today. In a lucid and wide-ranging analysis, he contends that three recent developments have altered the stakes and the contours of the politics of difference: the return of inequality as a central public concern, the return of biology as an asserted basis of racial and ethnic difference, and the return of religion as a key terrain of public contestation.

"Grounds for Difference is a subtle, original, and comprehensive book. All the hallmarks of Brubaker's earlier work, such as the conceptual clarity, the theoretical rigor—grounded in a well-researched and well-informed analysis—the crisp writing style, and the impeccable sociological reasoning are displayed here. There is a wealth of original ideas developed in this book that requires much careful reading and unpacking."
—Sinisa Maleševi?, H-Net Reviews

"This is an imposing collection that will be another milestone in the literature of ethnicity and nationalism."
—Christian Joppke, University of Bern

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Difference and Inequality
• 2. The Return of Biology
• 3. Language, Religion, and the Politics of Difference
• 4. Religion and Nationalism
• 5. The “Diaspora” Diaspora
• 6. Migration, Membership, and the Nation-State
• 7. Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Modernity
• Notes
• References
• Index