The authors succinctly note that contemporary studies of nationalism tend towards oversimplification. This oversimplification is manifested in a tacit and serious misrepresentation. The misrepresentation is a bifurcation of the colonial experience into the primary or self and the other. Such a manifestation is best represented by Said (1978) in terms of “orientalism.” Such a binary configuration of the colonial experience is an oversimplification for two reasons. First, it fails to acknowledge the interdimensional diversity of the colonized. To ignore interdimensional diversity is to fail to account for the role that gender and class play in the construct of the colonized. Second, binary configurations tend to misrepresent path dependence or the historical unfolding of particular nationalisms. In this sense, nationalism acquires an assumption of natural progression in terms of rights and welfare. The authors challenge the assumption that gender rights are acquired consummately in conjunction with nationalism. Instead, the authors make the argument that nationalism often acquires a regressive effect in terms of gender-class rights and welfare. As an example, Sharzad Mojab notes that Kurdish nationalism has had a conflictive relationship with the progression of women's welfare in addition to rights. Contemporary Kurdish nationalism has tended towards the regression of women's welfare. The root causes of a resort to regression are noted by Mojab to lie in the failure to effectively transform the preexisting precapitalist gender and class structure.

The historical dialect used in this work is especially useful in illustrating the relationship of political economy to gender and class within the context of nationalism. The various chapters provide diverse examples of how this relationship works out in this context. The overriding phenomenon is one where nationalism is held in conjunction with notions of propriety. In such cases, women as a class are assigned a proper role in accord with the growth of the national ideal. This role is primarily noted as bourgeois or elite in terms of origin. The role of women, contrary to commonly held assumptions, is noted as historically one of subordination, chastity, and other feminine virtues. Such views of ideal femininity are found to be important in the promotion of nationalist legitimization. However, the actually historical subservience of women as a class in conjunction with nationalism is not without some complexity. For example, Hearne in her historical account of Irish nationalism notes the actual proliferation of women's suffrage associations. The Irish women's suffrage struggle is rightly portrayed as complex. This complexity is noted by Hearne in two aspects. For one, the supporters of women's suffrage were not limited to those advocating complete independence from the 1800 Treaty of Union with Great Britain. Instead, women's suffrage found support in a multiplicity of groups, including some who supported the continuation of union with Great Britain, as well as Catholic and Protestant religious groups.

Yet, despite the numerous associations supporting women's suffrage, the religious and cultural structures of the Irish did not allow for its rapid inclusion. Instead, Hearne notes that the Irish male leadership actively opposed the further inclusion of women in the political arena. The Irish leadership, in line with the phenomenon well illustrated by this work, held a patriarchal view of the proper role of women consummate with the ideal Irish nation.

There are other interesting facets to the authors' counterargument that nationalism is not always synonymous with the progression of gender-class welfare and rights. Kailo, in her chapter on Finnish nationalism, notes the role of myth aberration in support of the notions of the ideal Finnish nation. The myth aberration is accomplished through the bourgeoisie compilation of the Finnish historical epic Kalevala. Thus, the primary ethnic primary minority, the Sámi who inhabit what is today Northern Finland, are relegated to childlike role in the Kalevala. The regulation of the Sami to a childlike status is noted by Kailo to exist in the desire to emulate western nationalism. Kailo notes that the Finns were relegated to little brother by the dominant Russians and Norwegians. Thus, in the rise of Finnish nationalism, it became necessary to subjugate a politically weak minority such as the Sami to such a role. This process is best summed up by Branch (1985, xi), as allowing for the necessary construction of a “politics of difference.”

The dominant and most memorable representation of both women and the Sami/Lapps in the epic are linked to images of victimhood or selfishness, greed, and arrogance. Although the southern men of Kalevala are the rapists and murderers, it is the women and the Sámi/Lapps, as I will show, who carry the projections of evildoing (Kailo 184).

Judith Whitehead's chapter on the perception of devadasi (temple dancers) tradition in South India during the Madras presidency (1860 - 1947) illustrates the transformation of organic cultural value structures in line with an ideal of nationalism. In this account, Whitehead traces the evolution of the perception of devadasi from organic, viewed as a state of acceptance, to eventual banishment. In a manner similar to the Kurdish case, but couched in the terms of modernity via health, the construction of an ideal Indian nationalism mandates the necessity of the ideal Indian woman. Such an ideal woman is cast in light of the virtues of chastity and sacrifice to family. The devadasi are one barrier along the path to an ideal nationalism. The story is complex because of the diversity of groups involved; yet, the story is convergent because the goal is the same. Protestant missionary groups, Brahman elites, and an emerging economic middle class all eventually agree about the need to eliminate the cultural ritual of devadasis.

By 1920, most reformers accepted the unconscious distinctions between chaste and unchaste women that were now, in turn, linked to medicalized conceptions of normality and deviance. Even Mahatma Ghandi idealized the chaste Sita as the role model for both male and female nationalists, and expelled the Barisol prostitutes from participation in the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee (166). The effect was a continuance of patriarchal norms of propriety despite the development of new economic middle class and the convergence of colonial English and capitalist values.

This work is important because it departs from the bifurcated analysis commonly employed in the study of nationalism. In addition, it challenges the assumption of progressiveness of women's welfare in conjunction with nationalism. Nationalism is often portrayed in a simplistic bifurcation between the self and the other; the underlying consequence of such a frame of thought is the perception of convergence among those who would constitute the nation-state. Yet, in reality, nation-states are rarely homogenous. Gender-class structures are the focus in this work and the authors do a good job of showing just how complex gender-class structures can be. Also important are the definitional contrasts between different forms of nationalism; the authors note the path dependence of forms of anticolonial movements in relation to the type of existent governmental structure. For example, revivalist anticolonial movements often result in the construction of authoritarian governments, which actually work to limit the progress of women's rights and welfare. The case studies in this work do a fine job of illustrating the veracity of these findings.