Modernity and Belonging

A striking aspect of recent processes of globalization is that they reinforce throughout the globe - in the North as much as in the South - a preoccupation with belonging and a re-affirmation of old and new boundaries by evoking or even "re-imagining" tradition. Global flows seem to be inherently intertwined with attempts at closure. Now that the nation-state is losing much of its self-evidence as the bearer of "modernization", other forms of belonging - localist, regionalist but also, for instance, religious ones - appears to compete with national citizenship as identity markers, often with violent consequences. This series aims to explore in a comparative perspective varying configurations emerging from this precarious intertwinement of modernity and belonging in different parts of the South.

edited by Prof. Dr. Peter Geschiere and Prof. Dr. Birgit Meyer