Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town

Abstract

Rogers Brubaker and his associates undertake an ambitious and challenging task in their monograph on Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town. Their “task” is to examine the everyday workings of ethnicity and nationhood within the context of elite-level ethno-political conflict in Cluj, Romania, but concentrating primarily on the perceptions and actions of the average inhabitants of the city and not its leaders. They undertake this task by first providing a historical context to their analysis in chapters 1-4 (Part One) and then “shifting the angle of vision” in chapters 5-12 (Part Two) to a “view from below, turning our attention from nationalist politics to everyday ethnicity” (p. 14).