RECODE

The process of nation-building has generally been described in terms of struggles for territorial concentration of power, political participation and social rights. Many of these conflicts can be equated with the development of industrial society. Since then social and political alignments have experienced a great change. What could be deemed the simple diversity of industrial societies - allocation struggles along class lines within sovereign states - has given place to a new, complex diversity in which a variety of social, political and cultural cleavages overlap and compete for political legitimacy at a national and supranational level. This process draws on a range of related developments. One is how struggles for recognition replace or are imbricated with distributive struggles. Our concern is that within a context wherein the nation-state may no longer sustain its role as the dominant social organisation and mode of community, these cleavages may interact in such a manner as to..