This new book delivers the first English translation of 'State and Nation' and brings together a collection of distinguished and leading political scientists to provide a detailed and critical assessment of Renner's theory of national-cultural autonomy.

For centuries autonomy has been a public policy tool used to provide stability and cohesion to multicultural societies. Examining case studies on non-territorial autonomy arrangements in comparison with territorial autonomy examples, this volume seeks to inform both design and decision making on managing diversity.

We are currently witnessing the global diffusion of multiculturalism, both as a political discourse and as a set of international legal norms. States today are under increasing international scrutiny regarding their treatment of ethnocultural groups, and are expected to meet evolving international standards regarding the rights of indigenous peoples, national minorities, and immigrants. This phenomenon represents a veritable revolution in international relations, yet has received little public or scholarly attention. In this book, Kymlicka examines the factors underlying this change, and the challenges it raises. Against those critics who argue that multiculturalism is a threat to universal human rights, Kymlicka shows that the sort of multiculturalism that is being globalized is inspired and constrained by the human rights revolution, and embedded in a framework of liberal-democratic values. However, the formulation and implementation of these international norms has generated a number of dilemmas. The policies adopted by international organizations to deal with ethnic diversity are driven by conflicting impulses. Pessimism about the destabilizing consequences of ethnic politics alternates with optimism about the prospects for a peaceful and democratic form of multicultural politics. The result is often an unstable mix of paralyzing fear and naïve hope, rooted in conflicting imperatives of security and justice. Moreover, given the enormous differences in the characteristics of minorities (eg., their size, territorial concentration, cultural markers, historic relationship to the state), it is difficult to formulate standards that apply to all groups. Yet attempts to formulate more targeted norms that apply only to specific categories of minorities (eg., "indigenous peoples" or "national minorities") have proven controversial and unstable. Kymlicka examines these dilemmas as they have played out in both the theory and practice of international minority rights protection, including recent developments regarding the rights of national minorities in Europe, the rights of indigenous peoples in the Americas, as well as emerging debates on multiculturalism in Asia and Africa.

Notwithstanding the advantages of physical power, the struggle for survival among societies is not merely a matter of serial armed clashes but of the nation's spiritual resources that in the end always decide upon the victory. In Europe, there indeed exist independent countries, insignificant from the point of view of the entire civilization, and born by sheer coincidence, yet, this coincidence, this fancy, or diplomatic ploy that created them can just as easily bring them to an end---the nations that count in the political calculations are only the enlightened ones. Therefore, our nation should not merely grow in power, strengthen its character, and foster in people the feeling of love for homeland, but also---inasmuch as it is possible---breath the fresh breeze of humanity's general progress, feed it to the nation, absorb its creative energy. Until now, we have trusted and lived only in the weary conditions, conditions devoid of health-giving elements---now, as a result the nation's heart beats too slowly and its mind works too tediously. We ought to open our windows to Europe, to the wind of continental change and allow it to air our sultry home, since as not all health comes from the inside, not all disease comes from the outside.

This book examines how the practices of criticism establish a particular domain of knowledge, the truth of literature. As a discussion of the ideology and politics of literary knowledge, it concentrates on constitutive elements of its production: the intertextuality of writing, the mediatedness of understanding, the formative role of reading expectations, the enabling presence of relevant literacy, the conditioning horizon of expectations, and the economic character of axiology. The main argument advanced is that criticism, by constructing literature as an ethnic heritage and communal treasure, participated in the invention of a national identity necessary for the legitimization of the modern state. Case studies have been selected from the highly relevant area of contemporary Greek criticism. Microscopic investigations of its dominant sites, mechanisms, and discourses reveal that the field emerged in response to concrete political needs and provided the state with a literary tradition as proof of its national composition, purity, continuity, and autonomy. The construction and canonization of texts as art works invariably employed, as a measure of aesthetic (and ultimately moral) merit, the Greekness of the literary sign. The book, as a genealogical approach to the neglected national role of literature, should be of interest to specialists in literary theory, comparative literature, Greek studies, and cultural studies. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In this volume, some of the world’s leading scholars involved in researching the fields of ethnopolitics, nationalism and ideas of nation and state, have come together to produce a work that is both original and accessible. The volume explores the rich, but sadly neglected tradition of thought on non-territorial cultural autonomy as exemplified by the work of Karl Renner and Otto Bauer and the European Nationalities Congress of the 1920s. Through a combination of theoretical analysis and case study approaches, the authors challenge conventional thinking on how best to reconcile competing claims over territory and cultural expression. Drawing upon a range of examples from countries such as Russia, Romania and Hungary, and by comparing the situation of territorially-based ethnic minorities with those - principally the Roma - who lack identification with a given state or states, the authors of this volume seek to supply answers and question received truths.