Resumen

MAIZ, Ramón. Los nacionalismos antes de las naciones. Polít. cult. [online]. 2006, n.25, pp.79-112. ISSN 0188-7742.

This paper´s objective is to explain nations as political processes for the construction of a national identity; thus said processes are open and contingent ones. Firstly, the paper shows how the casuistry of contemporary nationalisms is much more fluid, dynamic, and interrelated than what had been thought. Secondly, the public policies and institutional regulations -which are endowed with their own effects on the existing national interests and collective identities- are reviewed as an endogenous component of the problem. Lastly, all of the forenamed translates into a reconsideration of the classic notions of nation and nationalism, thus inverting the causality relationship between both of them.

Palabras llave : Nation; nationalism and public policies; identity; institutional regulation.