Global Convulsions affords the reader an array of observations, data, and insights pertaining to both local and global events around the issues of race, ethnicity and nationalism at the end of the twentieth century. It scrutinizes closely the phenomenon of race in both historical and scientific contexts, and calls out a range of sociohistorical forces that have engendered ethnicity and nationalism. Through case studies, the contributors bring into sharp focus an array of ethnic cleavages, the difficulty of the struggle for national rights where language and religion draw a hard ethnic divide, and the actual corrosiveness of ethnicity and nationalism on the state.

The enduring value of Global Convulsions lies in its global reach and the patterns that it calls out. It makes plain that the state is no salvation in relation to national chauvinism, ethnic exclusivism, and/or racial paranoia. Indeed, the state, if not the cause, is often a consummative force perpetuating these phenomena. Still, according to the contributors to this volume, the state has much potential to transcend the divides of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. And so, in Global Convulsions does one discern the possibility of "us/them" becoming "us together."