Citizenship, Nationality and Ethnicity: Reconciling CompetingIdentities (Indian Reprint, first published 1997 by Polity Press, in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd)
Most interpretations of ethnicity concentrate either on particular societies or on specific dimensions of ′world society′. This work takes quite a different approach, arguing that variations within and across societies are vital for understanding contemporary dilemmas of ethnicity. The author aims to develop a new analysis of the relation between the nation on the one hand, and ethnicity and citizenship on the other.
Oommen conceives of the nation as a product of a fusion of territory and language. He demonstrates that neither religion nor race determines national identities. As territory is seminal for a nation to emerge and exist, the dissociation between people and their ′homeland′ makes them an ethnie. Citizenship is conceptualized both as a status to which nationals and ethnies ought to be entitled and a set of obligations, a role they are expected to play.
Analyses of three historical episodes