Nationalism and the Economy : Exploring a Neglected Relationship

This book is the first attempt to bridge the current divide between studies addressing "economic nationalism" as a deliberate ideology and movement of economic 'nation-building', and the literature concerned with more diffuse expressions of economic "nationness"―from national economic symbols and memories, to the "banal" world of product communication. The editors seeks to highlight the importance of economic issues for the study of nations and nationalism, and its findings point to the need to give economic phenomena a more prominent place in the field of nationalism studies. The authors of the essays come from disciplines as diverse as economic and cultural history, political science, business studies, as well as sociology and anthropology. Their chapters address the nationalism-economy nexus in a variety of realms, including trade, foreign investment, and national control over resources, as well as consumption, migration, and welfare state policies. Some of the case studies have a historical focus on nation-building in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while others are concerned with contemporary developments. Several contributions provide in-depth analyses of single cases while others employ a comparative method. The geographical focus of the contributions vary widely, although, on balance, the majority of our authors deal with European countries.

Thomas Fetzer is Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations, Central European University, Budapest.

Stefan Berger is professor of social history at Ruhr University Bochum and the director of the Institute for Social Movements, RUB.