Siniša Malešević, Nationalism as a Way of Life: The Rise and Transformation of Modern Subjectivities – Cambridge University Press, November 2025

While nationalism is a term that is often associated with instability, violence, extremism, terrorism, wars and even genocide, in fact most forms of nationalism are nonviolent. Beyond politics, it is a set of discourses and practices that shape economic, social, legal, and cultural life all over the globe. This book explores the global rise and transformation of nationalism and analyses the organisational, ideological, and micro-interactional mechanisms that have made it the dominant way of life in the twenty-first century. In a series of case studies across time and space, the book zooms in on three key forms of lived experience: how nationalism operates as a multi-faceted meta-ideology, how national categories have become organisationally embedded in everyday practices and why nationalism has become the dominant form of modern subjectivity. The book is aimed at readers interested in understanding how nation-states and nationalisms have attained such influence in contemporary world.

• A comprehensive sociological explanation of the dominance of nation-states
• Based on the author’s theoretical and empirical research on nation-state formation
• For scholars and students in sociology, history, anthropology, geography, and nationalism studies