A Social Theory of the Nation-State: the political forms of modernity beyond methodological nationalism construes a novel and original social theory of the nation-state. It rejects nationalistic ways of thinking that take the nation-state for granted as much as globalist orthodoxy that speaks of its current and definitive decline. Its main aim is therefore to provide a renovated account of the nation-stateâs historical development and recent global challenges via an analysis of the writings of key social theorists. This reconstruction of the history of the nation-state into three periods: classical (K. Marx M. Weber E. Durkheim) modernist (T. Parsons R. Aron R. Bendix B. Moore) contemporary (M. Mann E. Hobsbawm U. Beck M. Castells N. Luhmann J. Habermas) For each phase it introduces social theoryâs key views about the nation-state its past present and future. In so doing this book rejects methodological nationalism the claim that the nation-state is the necessary representation of the modern society because it misrepresents the nation-stateâs own problematic trajectory in modernity. And methodological nationalism is also rejected because it is unable to capture the richness of social theoryâs intellectual canon. Instead via a strong conception of society and a subtler notion of the nation-state A Social Theory of the Nation-State tries to account for the âopacity of the nation-state in modernityâ. . Language: English