After the end of communism and the breakups of the studiously anational polities of the Soviet
Union and Yugoslavia into successor nation-states nationalism and ethnicity returned to the
fore of international politics. Earlier these forces had been relegated to the back burner of
history when the Cold War struggle unfolded. But even then the process of decolonization had
been none other but the gradual globalization of the nation and nation-state as the most
legitimate forms of modern-day peoplehood and statehood. At present nationalism is the sole
uncontested global ideology of statehood legitimization. The ethnic variety of this ideology
also forms the basis upon which stateless groups reinvent themselves as nations in order to be
able to lay claim to territorial autonomy or separate statehood. This volume inaugurates a new
Peter Lang book series Nationalisms across the Globe devoted to these burning issues which
shall influence the near future of the world. From a geographical perspective this collection
focuses mainly on Central and Eastern Europe and also Southern Africa. Significantly it also
proposes novel theoretical approaches to the phenomena of nationalism and ethnicity.
