Ethnicity without Groups

The book contains much that is interesting and novel: an illuminating exploration of how research in cognitive psychology can inform our understanding of ethno-national identity; an essay on the return of a soft version of assimilation as a desideratum for immigrants in the West; a trenchant critique of the use of the ethnic/civic distinction in nationalist studies; a rich analysis of how the 1848 revolutions were commemorated in 1998 in Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia; and a sensible review of the literature on nationalist and ethnic violence. The analysis is lucid and well written throughout and makes for a worthwhile collection… Brubaker is to be commended for producing a stimulating mix of history, politics, and sociology.
-- Bill Kissane Ethics and International Affairs

The chapters of Rogers Brubaker’s excellent new book are a stimulating collection of essays and articles, several of them co-authored, which were published between 1999 and 2004. The book takes its title from Chapter One, ‘Ethnicity without Groups,’ an elegant critique of the reification of ethnic groups… A fine book by a distinguished author.
-- Steve Fenton Ethnic and Racial Studies

[I]ts main messages concern how to think and talk about ethnicity: shake off the conceptual and analytical confusions that have made the subject a trap for unwary enthusiasts. Wisely, scrupulously, and concretely, Rogers Brubaker provides guidance for avoiding the trap.
-- Charles Tilly Sociological Forum

Ethnicity without Groups is decidedly the most incisive and compelling treatment known to me of a complex of issues that engage sociologists, historians, political scientists, literary theorists, and cross-disciplinary specialists in ethnic studies. Where are we right now, in our understanding of ‘ethnicity,’ ‘identity,’ ‘nationalism,’ and ‘assimilation’? The answers to these basic questions contained in the chapters now before us speak vividly to contemporary discourse, and will command immediate attention.
-- David Hollinger, University of California, Berkeley, author of Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism

Ethnicity without Groups is a formidable manuscript that is certain to become a key reference for the ethnicity, nationalism, and it is to be hoped race literatures. It is marvelously unconventional and originally argued as well as energetically written.
-- Christian Joppke, International University Bremen, author of Selecting by Origin: Ethnic Migration in the Liberal State