What is a nation? The issue of national identity has never been so pressing as small chunks of the globe are fiercely defended as the homeland for certain groups of people. But why, when world culture is increasingly amorphous, should this be? Archbishop Desmond Tutu gives the keynote to the inquiry in a report from South Africa, where the disenfranchised black population brought urgency to the struggle for citizenship. Historian Eric Hobsbawm reports from Austria, writer Maxine Hong Kingston travels to Vietnam, and Professor Eqbal Ahmad returns to India and Pakistan.