Nationalism and national identity are too multifaceted and elusive phenomena to be studied from the perspective of a single academic discipline.

Ethnonationalism in the Contemporary World is an unprecedented effort to surmount this barrier. Contributors represent a broad array of disciplines: anthropology, comparative politics, geography, history, linguistics, political science, sociology, social psychology and international relations. The authors are world-renowned authorities both within their respective disciplines and in the field of national identity. Their ranks include the current editors-in-chief of five of the six leading journals within that field as well as the founding editor of the sixth. All contributors have been authoring landmark pieces on national identity for several years, many for decades.

With the sole exception of a focal essay by Walker Connor, who coined the term 'ethnonationalism' and to whom the book is dedicated, none of the contributions have previously been published. They address the core issues of identity including race and identity, race and nation, ethnicity and nation, language and nation, religion and nation, homelands and homeland psychology, dating the creation of nations, the primordial debate, managing ethnic conflict and the relationship of nationalism to patriotism.

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Nationalism remains one of the key political, societal, and sociopsychological phenomena in contemporary Europe. Its significance for the justification of state policies and the stability of political systems, particularly in the context of advanced democracies, and its significance for people's basic needs for a political and cultural identity and a sense of national pride continue to challenge scholars. The international scholars assembled in this edited collection suggest that the use of three perspectives supranationalism, boundary-making nationalism, and regional nationalism may be promising as an explanatory framework for the analysis of nationalism in Europe. The book's contributors distance themselves from older dichotomies such as civic and ethnic nationalism and questions the one-sided normativity of nationalism, in particular in the concept of liberal nationalism. It argues that a promising approach to contemporary nationalism should reflect the multiplicity of nationalism. The volume is a collection of studies by a multinational group of authors with backgrounds in Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Latvia, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Ukraine and the United States."

In Ethnonationalism in the Contemporary World, world-renowned scholars employ various aspects of Connor's work to explicate the recent upsurge of nationalism on a global scale. In keeping with the growing awareness that the study of ethnonationalism requires an interdisciplinary approach, the contributors represent a number of academic disciplines, including anthropology, geography, history, linguistics, social psychology, sociology and world politics. The book discusses issues such as identity, ethnicity and nationalism, primordialism, social constructionism, ethnic conflict, separatism and federalism. It also features case studies on the Basque country, South Africa and Canada.