ABSTRACT
Throughout modern history there have been numerous episodes of ethnopolitical violence in subnational conflicts that have revolved around questions of both land in relation to nationality and citizenship relative to political authority. In these circumstances, subnational conflicts transform political imaginaries and cultural understandings of state and nation into battles for territory, representation, or autonomy. During these conflicts victims become caught in political struggles rooted in failures to build a congruent legitimacy between nation and state. Political violence and mass brutalities result whenever nation and nation-building or nationality and nationalism do not align with state and state-building or citizenship and patriotism. Nationalism is an aspect of political culture that adheres to a sense of exceptionalism in the identity constructions of peoplehood. It thrives whenever a nation elevates the primacy of the common features that bind them together. Nationalism extols, even glorifies, the meanings of those unique dimensions of solidarity that lead members of the nation to recognize in one another what can be seen in no one else. It can be felt or experienced in a variety of ways according to political culture as a set of ideological convictions, as an attitude or sentiment, or as a protocol made present through rituals. At its extreme it turns toward essentialized or objectified forms of national superiority. When it does so, it is amenable to manipulations that can involve political violence. Patriotism represents an aspect of political
culture that adheres to the legitimacy of the sovereign state and to the abiding significance of its security and of the obligations of sacrifice, whether measured in blood or treasure as calls above other values. It sometimes calls forth the kinds of heroism under conditions of war or duress that are honored across political cultures of modern nation-states. Generally speaking, nationalism and patriotism represent manifestations of the political cultures that are central to the making of modern nation-states.
