ANRV381-SO35-02 ARI 1 June 2009 17:13Ethnicity, Race,and NationalismRogers BrubakerDepartment of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095;email: [email protected]. Rev. Sociol. 2009. 35:21–42The Annual Review of Sociology is online atsoc.annualreviews.orgThis article’s doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-115916Copyrightc 2009 by Annual Reviews.All rights reserved0360-0572/09/0811-0021$20.00Key Wordsidentity, culture, classificationAbstractThis article traces the contours of a comparative, global, cross-disciplinary, and multiparadigmatic field that construes ethnicity, race,and nationhood as a single integrated family of forms of cultural under-standing, social organization, and political contestation. It then reviewsa set of diverse yet related efforts to study the way ethnicity, race, andnation work in social, cultural, and political life without treating eth-nic groups, races, or nations as substantial entities, or even taking suchgroups as units of analysis at all.21Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:21-42. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orgby Rogers Brubaker on 07/23/09. For personal use only.ANRV381-SO35-02 ARI 1 June 2009 17:13The scholarship on ethnicity, race, and na-tionalism has become unsurveyably vast. Nu-merous articles in the various social scienceAnnual Reviews have addressed particularthemes, problems, and strands of research inthis domain.1Clearly, any review must be ruth-lessly selective. I focus on two trends of the pasttwo decades (though both have older roots).The first is the emergence of an integrated in-terdisciplinary field of study embracing ethnic-ity, race, and nationalism in all the varied formsthey have assumed in different times and places.The second is the development of a set of an-alytic resources for studying the way ethnicity,race, and nation work in social, cultural, and po-litical life without treating ethnic groups, races,or nations as substantial entities, or even takingsuch groups as units of analysis at all.TOWARD AN INTEGRATEDFIELD OF STUDYThe literature on ethnicity, race, and nationsand nationalism was long fragmented and com-partmentalized. Ethnicity and ethnopolitics;race, racism, and racial politics; and nationhoodand nationalism were largely separate fields ofstudy. The literature was fragmented along dis-ciplinary lines as well: There was relatively littlecross-fertilization between work in sociology,anthropology, political science, and history, andstill less between these and other disciplinessuch as archaeology, linguistics, economics, anddisciplines in the humanities. Finally, the litera-ture was fragmented along regional lines: Therewas little sustained comparative work and of-ten little awareness of cross-regional variationin understandings and configurations of ethnic-ity, race, and nationhood. Much of the litera-ture produced in and on the United States, in1A selective list of only the most wide ranging ofthese in the last quarter century would include Olzak(1983), Yinger (1985), B. Williams (1989), Foster (1991),Calhoun (1993), Alonso (1994), R. Williams (1994),Harrison (1995), Brubaker & Laitin (1998), Kohl (1998),Nagel (2000), Winant (2000), Friedland (2001), Sanders(2002), and Chandra (2006).particular, was strikingly parochial (Wacquant1997, pp. 223–24).This pattern of fragmentation persists inmany respects; in some ways, it has even becomemore pronounced. In part, fragmentation is anunavoidable consequence of the explosion ofwork on ethnicity, race, and nationalism. More-over, even as disciplinary compartmentalizationhas weakened, what might be called paradig-matic compartmentalization has not: discourse-analytic, game-theoretic, institutionalist, po-litical economic, evolutionary psychological,ethnosymbolist, cognitive, network-analytic,and agent-based modeling-oriented work areall, to varying degrees, interdisciplinary un-dertakings; but apart from a few relativelyproximate pairings, there is minimal cross-fertilization among these enterprises. And whilethe institutionalization of African Americanstudies and other ethnic studies programs inthe United States has helped overcome disci-plinary boundaries, it has reinforced a group-based compartmentalization.Yet while fragmentation and compartmen-talization persist, a growing body of work hasreframed the study of ethnicity, race, and na-tionalism in broader and more integrated terms.This has generated a new field of study that iscomparative, global, cross-disciplinary, and multi-paradigmatic, and that construes ethnicity, race,and nationhood as a single integrated family offorms of cultural understanding, social organi-zation, and political contestation. This sectiontraces the contours of this new field, addressingeach of these characteristics in turn.In the first place, the field is both expresslyand implicitly comparative. Following the trailblazed by the pioneering comparative studiesof Geertz (1963), Schermerhorn (1970),Degler (1971), Van den Berghe (1978 [1967]),Fredrickson (1981), Banton (1983), Horowitz(1985), Hroch (1985), and others, a growingbody of comparative work has taken as its unitsof analysis not only countries (see inter aliaBrubaker 1992, Greenfeld 1992, Lustick 1993,Vujacic 1996, Laitin 1998, Marx 1998, Yashar1999, Centeno 2002, Wimmer 2002, Ron2003, Joppke 2005, Kalyvas & Kocher 2007,22 BrubakerAnnu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:21-42. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orgby Rogers Brubaker on 07/23/09. For personal use only.ANRV381-SO35-02 ARI 1 June 2009 17:13Posner 2007,¨Ozkirimli & Sofos 2008,Wacquant 2008) but also empires, worldregions, and civilizations (Armstrong 1982,Breuilly 1993); regions, provinces, or stateswithin federal polities (Beissinger 2002,Chandra 2004, Wilkinson 2004); cities(Friedland & Hecht 1998, Varshney 2002);ethnoracial, ethnoreligious, and ethnolinguis-tic groups (Horowitz 2001, chapter 5; Alba &Nee 2003); and historical epochs (Smith 1986,Anderson 1991, Brubaker 1996).Apart from such expressly comparativework, there is a further sense in which thefield is comparative. Even those who are notcomparativists per se have become increasinglyaware of the broad spectrum of variation in thesocial organization and political expression ofethnicity, race, and nation; and this awarenesshas informed the ways in which they construethe field, pose questions, and frame arguments.This comparative awareness is evident in theframing of a number of sophisticated overviewsor surveys