`Ethnicity is Everywhere': On Globalization and the Transformation of Cultural Identity

Abstract

This article seeks to discover a possible relationship between processes of globalization and changing modes of constructing cultural identities. After briefly examining the pros and cons related to the widespread thesis of the end of the nation-state, the article describes the spatial reconfiguration of the nation-state focusing on the separation of territoriality, sovereignty and identity. Finally, the author links these spatial reconfigurations with constructions of cultural identities which seem more and more to rely on and play with strategies of ethnicization. The basic presumption is that globalization and ethnicization may be two aspects of the same phenomenon.