Putting the Cart Before the Horse: Contested Nationalism and the Crisis of the Nation-state in Somalia

This book represents an attempt to introduce the notion of contested national identity as a theoretical framework for understanding the crisis of the nation-state in Somalia. The volume depicts a major shift in the study of Somali historiography in that the contributors challenge the well-known Somali assumption that a common culture can form the basis for national solidarity regardless of the social and political contexts within with the boundaries are constituted.