As much of the world turns its attention to questions of the role and even survival of the nation-state formation in an increasingly globalised world, the authors of this interdisciplinary volume shift the focus of the debate by examining various sites of social action where the nation-state is still in a formative stage even as it is increasingly under threat. Challenges to emergent nation-building arise both from within multi-ethnic 'states' as well as from without, e.g., through pressure from international human rights organisations and the global capitalist marketplace.

The authors demonstrate too that this betwixt and between situation is neither entirely new nor unique to the globalised world system; parallel tensions already existed between locals and migrants of regional trading networks before the European colonisers arrived on the scene to further complicate matters. Including micro level ethnographies, local histories and a macro-theoretical overview of the world-system, this volume directly engages with the complexities of globalisation in marginal and troubled states, complexities that are themselves typically marginalised in debates all too often obsessed with the plight of the most powerful and developed nations.