Nationalism and Intra-State Conflicts in the Postcolonial World

(Hardback)

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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.

Reviews

Intra-state ethnic conflict remains a topic of perennial interest, not least because most of the worlds states have ethnically diverse populations. Fonkem Achankengs 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. -- Alexander Maxwell, Victoria University of Wellington
In this most relevant and significant book, two conflict-causing applications of nationalism are courageously addressed. Post-colonial power elites still use it as an imported rationale behind top-down attempts to unify population groups within a state. At various times and places, however, suppressed groups use it as a banner in their bottom-up struggles to acquire self-determination. The widely spread problem of reconciling national(ist) aspirations is frankly discussed in the foreword, four general chapters and eighteen case-specific chapters (covering five continents). Some questions inevitably have to remain open, but meaningful guidelines towards resolving these extremely complex conflicts are given especially to the groups who themselves hold the key to their freedom. -- Jannie Malan, The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes

Author Bio

Fonkem Achankeng is assistant professor at University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.