376 Am Soc (2010) 41:375–381 Beginning with a 1991 article introducing a special issue of Theory and Society on ethnic conflict and nationalist movements in what was then still the Soviet Union, Chuck came to develop an interest in nationalism. The theory emerged as an extension of his work on state-formation. A key strand of that work—the bellicist strand, as Gorski (2003:5) has called it—centered on the connection between war- making and state-making. The heightened extractive appetites of militarily expansive states caused a progressive shift from indirect to direct rule, and this in turn generated resistance from previously insulated and autonomous regional power- holders and intermediaries. Chuck identified two forms of nationalism that emerged from this juncture of increasingly intrusive direct rule and resistance to this novel form of rule: the top- down, nation-shaping nationalism of central rulers, and the bottom-up, state-seeking nationalism of threatened peripheral elites. He defined top-down nationalism as the “insistence that the nation’s collective interest, as interpreted by the state’s current rulers, should take priority over all particularisms.” He noted that rulers elaborated a variety of “doctrines and practices that implemented their visions of the Nation,” including standardized languages, histories, ceremonies, museums, and schools (1996: 303–4). Bottom up nationalism, too, was an elite-led phenomenon (and hence the label is something of a misnomer). It was driven by political entrepreneurs who had “strong investments in alternative definitions of language, history, and community” and who responded to top-down nationalism by “rally[ing] supporters in the name of oppressed and threatened nations” (1996:304). Chuck’s first sketch of a theory of nationalism explicitly located his account “in the tradition of structural rather than cultural... or social-psychological theories” (1991: 574). In later formulations, the core of the argument remained structural, but Chuck elaborated a complementary cultural line of analysis, focused on what I would call the performative dimension of nationalism. Leaders of state-seeking nationalist movements, he observed, “put much of their energy into organizing public performances that broadcast the message: We Are a Nation” (1996: 304–5). Similar performances, one might add, are often undertaken by rulers of newly independent states. These performances were examples of what Chuck would later call “standard stories” (2002), similar in form and content across a wide range of cases, stories that characteristically emphasized the antiquity, cultural homogeneity, and cohesiveness of the nation. As such “we are a Nation” performances gained prominence, other kinds of performances—Chuck mentions “we are the rightful dynasty” performances— became less relevant to establishing a rightful claim to rule (1996:305). Performative enactments of nationhood were high-stakes performances. As external recognition became crucial to the process of establishing and validating new states, performances of nationhood—“disciplined, stereotyped public demon- strations of nationness” (1998: 179)—became increasingly important. Success in convincing key audiences of the claim to nationhood could be rewarded with control of a newly independent state. By treating nationhood as a political claim rather than a cultural or demographic fact, by emphasizing the performative enactment of claims to nationhood, and by highlighting the importance of recognition by powerful external audiences, Chuck situated nationalism in the broader domain of social movements and contentious