Ethnicity, State, and World-system: Comments on the Ways of Making History

Relating state, ethnicity, and globalization throughout history raises the question of the durability of concepts capable of transcending historical time in order to produce appropriate explanatory models. The article, which offers a critical commentary on the articles by Fred Riggs, Thomas Hall, Jonathan Friedman, and Majid Tehranian, shows the strength of long term ( longue durée) historical models to explain what appears “new” or a “return” to nationalism. The author discusses the position taken by the four authors concerning ethnic conflicts and immigration and concludes with the observation that natural history is an illusion.