Description: The nation-state and the colonial state have always been the same thing: the ethnic and religious majorities of the former created only through the violent "minoritization" inherent in the latter. Assessing cases from the United States to Eastern Europe, Israel, and Sudan, Mahmood Mamdani suggests a radical solution: the state without a nation.
Brief description: Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Professor of Anthropology and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. He was Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala from 2010 to 2022. His books include Neither Settler nor Native, Citizen and Subject, When Victims Become Killers, and Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.
Review Quotes:
Argues for a wider, political approach to understanding historical violence rather than an individual, criminal one. Mamdani examines everything from the treatment of Native Americans to Nazism to South African apartheid. It is a complex and at times painful book, but history is often complex and painful, and trying to understand it is one of our few real paths to progress.
--Candice Millard "New York Times" (5/5/2022 12:00:00 AM)