Former Fellows

The present research project seeks to explore the analytical potential but also the limits of the most recent theories of pervasiveness and intensity of national categories, identities, and ideologies. While, conceptually, the project focuses on the theories of ‘national indifference’ and of ‘weak nationalism’ and, geographically, on the Balkan area, its more general ambition is to contribute to the ongoing debates on temporality and social diffusion of nationalism in modern Europe. By crediting ‘national indifference’ an explanatory value, the proposed research tries to understand often obscured by national historians self-identifications and external categorizations of modern and contemporary societies since the late nineteenth century; it surveys practical choices and reasons of (non-)élite populations but it also tackles epistemological problems related to their study. By analyzing the opposition between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ forms of nationalism, the present project also questions the methodological coherence of this and similar distinctions. Through a critical appraisal of theories, the project attempts to shed light on questions such as the temporal scales of the spread of nationalism, the social logics of loyalty and pragmatism, the relationship between identity and interest as well as the extent to which nationalism is not only qualifiable but also quantifiable.