This book centers on one fundamental question: is it possible to imagine a progressive sense of nation? Rooted in historic and contemporary social struggles, the chapters in this collection examine what a progressive sense of nation might look like, with authors exploring the theory and practice of the nation beyond nationalism.

The book is written against the background of rising authoritarian-nationalist movements globally over the last few decades, where many countries have witnessed the dramatic escalation of ethnic-nationalist parties impacting and changing mainstream politics and normalizing anti-immigration, anti-democratic and Islamophobic discourse. This volume discusses viable alternatives for nationalism, which is inherently exclusionary, exploring the possibility of a type of nation-based politics which does not follow the principles of nationalism.

With its focus on nationalism, politics and social struggles, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of political and social sciences.

İlker Cörüt is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity at Potsdam University, Germany. He is interested in anthropology of the state and Turkish nationalism, nationalism studies, contemporary social theory, and the political economy of modern Turkish history and the Kurdish question.

Joost Jongerden is Associate Professor Do-it-Yourself development at the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and Project Professor at the Asian Platform for Global Sustainability & Transcultural Studies at Kyoto University, Japan. Having a geographical focus on the rural, Turkey and Kurdistan, his research centers on the question of how people create and maintain a livable life under conditions of precarity.