"A Social Theory of the Nation-State: The Political Forms of Modernity Beyond Methodological Nationalism," construes a novel and original social theory of the nation-state. It rejects nationalistic ways of thinking that take the nation-state for granted as much as globalist orthodoxy that speaks of its current and definitive decline. Its main aim is therefore to provide a renovated account of the nation-state's historical development and recent global challenges via an analysis of the writings of key social theorists. This reconstruction of the history of the nation-state is divided into three periods such as: classical (K. Marx, M. Weber, E. Durkheim), modernist (T. Parsons, R. Aron, R. Bendix, B. Moore), and, contemporary (M. Mann, E. Hobsbawm, U. Beck, M. Castells, N. Luhmann, J. Habermas). For each phase, it introduces social theory's key views about the nation-state, its past, present and future.In so doing this book rejects methodological nationalism, the claim that the nation-state is the necessary representation of the modern society, because it misrepresents the nation-state's own problematic trajectory in modernity. And methodological nationalism is also rejected because it is unable to capture the richness of social theory's intellectual canon. Instead, via a strong conception of society and a subtler notion of the nation-state, "A Social Theory of the Nation-State" tries to account for the 'opacity of the nation-state in modernity'.
Pt. I Understanding the nation-state 7
1 The critique of methodological nationalism : a debate in two waves 9
2 A claim to universalism : breaking the equation between the nation-state and society apart 21
Pt. II Classical social theory 33
3 Karl Marx (1818-1883) : the rise of capitalism and the historical elusiveness of the nation-state 35
4 Max Weber (1864-1920) : politics and the sociological equivocations of the nation-state 49
5 Emile Durkheim (1857-1917) : moral universalism and the normative ambiguity of the nation-state 61
Pt. III Modernist social theory 75
6 Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) : the totalitarian threat to the nation-state 77
7 Raymond Aron (1905-1983), Barrington Moore (1913-2005) and Reinhard Bendix (1916-1991) : industrialism and the historicity of the nation-state 94
Pt. IV Contemporary social theory 113
8 Michael Mann (1942-present) and Eric Hobsbawm (1919- present) : classes, nations and different conceptions of the nation-state 115
9 Manuel Castells (1942-present) and globalisation theorists : the 'definitive' decline of the nation-state 129
10 Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) and Jurgen Habermas (1929-present) : world society, cosmopolitanism and the nation-state
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