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Most interpretations of ethnicity concentrate either on particular societies or on specific dimensions of "world society". This work takes quite a different approach, arguing for the importance of variations within societies as 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. Oomen conceives of the nation as a product of the fusion of territory and language. He demonstrates that neither religion nor race alone determine national identities. As territory is seminal for a nation to emerge and exist, the dissociation between people and their "homeland" makes them an ethnie - in effect, a nation within a nation. Citizenship is conceptualized, both as a status to which nationals and ethnies ought to be entitled and as a set of obligations, a role they are expected to play. Analyses of three historical episodes - colonialism and European expansion, proletarian internationalism and the nationality policy of the socialist states, the nation-state and its project of cultural unity - are utilised to provide the empirical content of the argument. This book should be useful for second-year undergraduates and above in the areas of sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.