Manufacturing national attachments: gift-giving, market exchange and the construction of Irish and Zionist diaspora bonds Dan Lainer-Vos Published online: 16 October 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Abstract This article explores nation building as an organizational accomplishment and uses the concept of boundary object to explain how the groups that compose the nation cooperate. Specifically, the article examines the mechanisms devised to secure a flow of money from the Irish-American and Jewish-American diasporas to their respective homelands. To overcome problems associated with conventional philanthropy, Irish and Jewish nationalists issued bonds and sold them to their American compatriots as a hybrid of a gift and an investment. In the Irish case, disagreements about the entitlement to the proceeds resulted in the termination of the bond project. In the Jewish case, the bond served as a boundary object allowing American and Israeli Jews to cooperate despite ongoing tensions. The Israeli bond provided Jewish-Americans with an additional way to invest themselves financially and emotionally in Israel. This bond is an example of a socio-technical mechanism used to create national attachments. Keywords Nation building . Diaspora . Boundary object . Zone of indecision . National attachments To gain better insight into the process of nation building, this article identifies the organizational difficulties that arise in bringing different groups to cooperate in the national struggle, and explores the innovations introduced to overcome them. Instead of treating nation building as a process of cultural representation, it treats the making of nations as a concrete practical organizational challenge. Specifically, the article examines the Irish and Israeli attempts to secure financial resources from their compatriots in the United States through the floating of national bonds in the 1920s and 1950s, respectively. Examined on purely financial grounds, these bonds were Theor Soc (2012) 41:73–106 DOI 10.1007/s11186-011-9157-1 D. Lainer-Vos (*) Department of Sociology, University of Southern California, 3620 S. Vermont Ave., Kaprielian Hall 352, Los Angeles, CA 90089-2539, USA e-mail: Lainer-vos@usc.edu