Nationalism is one of the most pressing of global problems. Drawing on examples from around the world, Nationalism considers nationalism's diverse manifestations, its history, and its relationship to imperialism and colonialism. Calhoun also challenges attempts to "debunk" nationalism that fail to grasp why it still has such power and centrality in modern life.

The Societas podcast is recorded by IPK Director and Social Science Research Council President Craig Calhoun at the SSRC.

Craig Calhoun re-examines nationalism in light of post-1989 enthusiasm for globalization and the new anxieties of the twenty-first century. Nations Matter argues that pursuing a purely postnational politics is premature at best and possibly dangerous. Calhoun argues that, rather than wishing nationalism away, it is important to transform it. One key is to distinguish the ideology of nationalism as fixed and inherited identity from the development of public projects that continually remake the terms of national integration. Standard concepts like 'civic' vs. 'ethnic' nationalism can get in the way unless they are critically re-examined – as an important chapter in this book does.

Practicing Culture seeks to revitalize the field of cultural sociology with an emphasis not on abstract theoretical debates but on showing how to put theoretical sources to work in empirical research. Culture is not just products and representations but practices. It is made and remade in countless small ways and occasional bursts of innovation. It is something people do—and do in rich variety and distinctive contexts as engaging case studies from the book reveal. For example; * In Russia’s most Western city, Kaliningrad, residents dig for artifacts symbolizing a German past – even though their parents only migrated to what was once Konigsberg after WWII. * From Spain to Poland to Canada advertising firms are hired to make nations into "brands", a globally reproduced strategy for claiming to be distinctive in attractive and conventional ways. * In Buenos Aires, opera listeners stand in packed galleries, listening as passionately as singers perform, closing their eyes and claiming to be elevated and remade by the music. * In the U.S. fans of professional wrestling pride themselves on being smart enough to know how much is trickery and how the tricks work yet still believe in the contest. Practicing Culture will reshape and invigorate the sociology of culture not only through internal development but through enhanced connections to the interdisciplinary social theory and to related fields like the Sociology of Knowledge and Ethnography. It will prove an essential tool for students and researchers of Cultural Theory, Contemporary Social Theory and Cultural Sociology.

The period since 1989 has been marked by the global endorsement of open markets, the free flow of finance capital and liberal ideas of constitutional rule, and the active expansion of human rights. Why, then, in this era of intense globalization, has there been a proliferation of violence, of ethnic cleansing on the one hand and extreme forms of political violence against civilian populations on the other? Fear of Small Numbers is Arjun Appadurai’s answer to that question. A leading theorist of globalization, Appadurai turns his attention to the complex dynamics fueling large-scale, culturally motivated violence, from the genocides that racked Eastern Europe, Rwanda, and India in the early 1990s to the contemporary “war on terror.” Providing a conceptually innovative framework for understanding sources of global violence, he describes how the nation-state has grown ambivalent about minorities at the same time that minorities, because of global communication technologies and migration flows, increasingly see themselves as parts of powerful global majorities. By exacerbating the inequalities produced by globalization, the volatile, slippery relationship between majorities and minorities foments the desire to eradicate cultural difference. Appadurai analyzes the darker side of globalization: suicide bombings; anti-Americanism; the surplus of rage manifest in televised beheadings; the clash of global ideologies; and the difficulties that flexible, cellular organizations such as Al-Qaeda present to centralized, “vertebrate” structures such as national governments. Powerful, provocative, and timely, Fear of Small Numbers is a thoughtful invitation to rethink what violence is in an age of globalization.

Defining craftsmanship far more broadly than “skilled manual labor,” Richard Sennett maintains that the computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen engage in a craftsman’s work. Craftsmanship names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, says the author, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. In this thought-provoking book, one of our most distinguished public intellectuals explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world.

The Craftsman engages the many dimensions of skill—from the technical demands to the obsessive energy required to do good work. Craftsmanship leads Sennett across time and space, from ancient Roman brickmakers to Renaissance goldsmiths to the printing presses of Enlightenment Paris and the factories of industrial London; in the modern world he explores what experiences of good work are shared by computer programmers, nurses and doctors, musicians, glassblowers, and cooks. Unique in the scope of his thinking, Sennett expands previous notions of crafts and craftsmen and apprises us of the surprising extent to which we can learn about ourselves through the labor of making physical things.

Richard Sennett is professor of sociology at New York University and at The London School of Economics. Before becoming a sociologist, he studied music professionally. He has received many awards and honors, most recently the 2006 Hegel Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences.

"In the 1990s, much discourse both in and about global civil society was beset by a false opposition. On the one side was the utopia of cosmopolitan liberalism. On the other was the specter of reactionary nationalism or fundamentalism."

"There has not been enough attention given to calamities, emergencies, and disasters in the context of sociological accounts of globalization, and it is to this task that I would like to contribute today. I want to outline the way in which I think the emergency - for this, rather than "calamity" has become the standard term - has been woven into a social imaginary, a way of seeing the world that fundamentally shapes action in it."

"In the 1980s, the work of Hungarian and other Eastern European intellectuals was responsible for renewed attention to one of the core concepts of modern Western history, the idea of civil society. The events of 1989 catapulted this concern from academic circles to the broader public discourse." Vol. 5:2. 267-280.

"One need be no friend to terrorism to be sorry that the dominant response to the terrorist attacks has been framed as a matter of war rather than crime, an attack on America rather than an attack on humanity. What could have been an occasion for renewing the drive to establish an international criminal court and multilateral institutions needed for law enforcement quickly became an occasion for America to demonstrate its power and its allies to fall in line with the "war on terrorism". Militarism gained and civil society lost not only on September 11 but in the response that followed." Vol. 101:4, p. 869-897.

Vol. 7:2, pp. 210-225.

"Salman Rushdie (2000) writes that 'among the great struggles of man – good/evil, reason/unreason, etc. – there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey'. Cosmopolitanism is a central way in which the modern era has organised 'the fantasy of Away'. The term is operative in culture and commerce, ethics and politics. Whether as the fashionable man of the world or the responsible (and gender neutral) citizen of the world, the cosmopolitan inhabits the world." *This is the ASEN/Nations and Nationalism Ernest Gellner Nationalism Lecture, delivered at the London School of Economics and Political Science, 16 April 2007. Vol. 14:3, 427-448.

Vol. 21:2, 211-236. Reprinted in P. Ho and R. L. Edmonds, eds.: Embedded Environmentalism: Opportunities and Constraints of a Social Movement in China. London: Routledge, 2007.

Chapter 10 in Europe without Borders: Re-Mapping Territory, Citizenship and Identity in a Transnational Age.

Vol. 104:3, p. 846-871.

"Europe is an object of aspirations – and anxieties – on the European continent. It is as exciting and controversial in Britain. And it is also an object of global interest. At the moment, each of these is focused largely on the notion of a more cosmopolitan Europe. This idea of cosmopolitan Europe is developed in a range of academic analyses. But it is rooted in an amalgam of three different sets of intellectual and popular images. Europe has long been seen as sophisticated, worldly wise, the continent of independent cinema auteurs and profound philosophers, Gaulloises cigarettes, Italian suits, and German music. This continues. Cosmopolitanism is in considerable part a name for sophistication." Chapter 35 in Sage Handbook of European Studies

Earlier versions of parts of this text were presented as a Benjamin Meaker Lecture at the University of Bristol in June 2000 and to the Center for Transcultural Studies in July 2000. I am grateful for discussion from both audiences and especially to colleagues in the Center for their sustained challenges to and shaping of my ideas over many years. Vol. 14(1): 147–171.

Vol. 12:4, pp. 485-504

"Social scientists, who spend much of their lives in universities and who should know better, are often surprisingly oblivious to transformations of higher education. We should not be, for these central institutional bases of our work are undergoing deep structural changes and the implications are profound. And we should do more than grumble about our changing working conditions. After all, more is at stake, from the basic educational mission of universities to their support for a vibrant public sphere to structures of social inequality." Vol. 43:4, p. 8-18.