God, Guns and Guerrillas

This paper is organized into two parts. First, it examines the perennial question in academia pertaining to whether or not ‘nations and nationalism’ are constructs of European modernity or if they have existed in variable forms throughout the trajectory of history. The paper explores this question through the writings of influential academics in the field since the end of The Second World War. It ponders a primary question in this debate on the nature of religious nationalism vs. ethnic nationalism and whether their roots in the pre-modern era can be definitively distinguished from nationalism in the Modern Era. Turning to Kosovo, a seat of both Serbian religious nationalism and Albanian ethnic nationalism it then questions whether contemporary circuits of power have reverted to romantic national ideas of ethnically pure states by supporting the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) and its post-conflict predecessors in Kosovo. It ends with a discussion about the consequences of this process of reversion in the 21st century.