How Many Exceptionalisms?

Aristide R. Zolberg is the Walter Eberstadt Professor of Political Science and Historical Studies at the New School for Social Research. He wrote the foreword to The Unwanted and is the author of A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America, and Creating Political Order: The Party-States of West Africa and co-author of Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World.

"Ever since the late 1960s…Aristide Zolberg has crafted wonderfully engaging essays that have profoundly altered our understanding of politics and society in Africa, Europe and the United States. His writing has been deeply…global, especially with its focus on the large-scale movement of populations and their reception in new locations….Zolberg has been one of our most creative and informed scholars in the social sciences, at work on issues that really matter." -Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University"Each of the chapters in How Many Exceptionalisms? is a major academic contribution on its own terms. They show us how Zolberg has extricated key conceptual tools from the complicated architectures of social and political life-the management of diversity, the interactions of culture and history, the role of state formation in creating refugees, the limits of ‘crisis’ perspectives, and more. Together this selection of articles is one of those rare cases where the whole is indeed more than the sum of its parts. As the foremost contributor to macrohistorical analysis of international migration, Zolberg knows how to choose his essays: their sequence is a narrative that shows us how he got there, and does so with a grand geopolitical sweep."-Saskia Sassen, author of Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages"[A] thoughtful reflection on macroanalysis.... Zolberg has presented us with a deeply global book. Its geographic sweep, historical depth, and theoretical eclecticism will surely nourish our curiosities about the past and present."-Contemporary Sociology

• Introduction: Explorations in Political Macroanalysis 1. Patterns of National Integration 2. Moments of Madness 3. The Making of Flemings and Walloons: Belgium, 1830-1914 4. International Migration Policies in a Changing World System 5. Origins of the Modern World System: A Missing Link 6. The Formation of New States as a Refugee-Generating Process 7. How Many Exceptionalisms? 8. The Great Wall Against China: Responses to the First Immigration Crisis, 1885-1925 9. Matters of State: Theorizing Immigration Policy 10. Why Islam Is Like Spanish: Cultural Incorporation in Eurpoe and the United States (co-authored by Long Litt Woon) 11. International Engagement and American Democracy: A Comparative Perspective Index