Tom Nairn

Globalization has brought with it many difficult and contradictory phenomena: violence, deep national insecurities, religious divisions and individual insecurities. This book takes a critical look at three key areas - globalism, nationalism, and state-terror - to confront common mythologies and identify the root causes of the problems we face. Too many commentators still argue that globalization is predominantly a neo-liberal economic phenomenon; that nation-states are on the way out, and that terror is something that primarily comes from below. Global Matrix exposes the limitations of this argument. The authors explore four main questions: -- What is the cultural-political nature of contemporary globalization? -- How adequate, particularly in the context of nation-states, is a politics of democratic nationalism? -- How are we to understand new and old nations in the context of changes across the late twentieth century and into the present? -- Where does national violence come from and what does it mean for a 'war on terror'?Written by two leading scholars, this is a lucid study of what place the nation-state has in a globalizing world that will appeal to students across the political and social sciences.

Tom Nairn has been the most forceful and original mind to confront, de-mask and anatomise the British state. The perception that Great Britain was a multinational state and not a united nation had never quite been lost over the centuries, but it was Nairn who almost single-handedly hammered this truth into the skull of British intellectuals and campaigners until it became as it is today practically uncontested by the political class. NEAL ASCHERSON, London Review of BooksFor the last fifty years Tom Nairn has been one of Britains most consistently provocative and influential voices. No other writer has left so deep an impression on mainstream debates about Scotland, Britain and nationalism. No other writer has so thoroughly interrogated the United Kingdoms post-war crisis and decline.Old Nations, Auld Enemies, New Times brings together, for the first time, the full span of Nairns work, from his ground-breaking analysis of the British state in the 1960s and 70s to his more recent examinations of globalisation, the English question and Scotlands independence referendum.Nairn stands alongside the great Scottish intellectual and literary figures of recent decades. Old Nations is the definitive Nairn collection and an indispensable guide for anyone looking to understand the current moment in Scottish and British politics.For originality of mind, Tom Nairn is without equal among his contemporaries. In fifty years, there has never been a time in my memory in which that he was saying went with the flow of opinion, on the left or at large ... All of this in a style of extraordinary vigour and beauty and not least humour: writing as democratic as his own unswerving politics. One thinks: if only there were more like him. But that would be a contradiction in terms. PERRY ANDERSON, New Left ReviewTom Nairn is well known both as a major contributor to debates about Scottish nationalism and the re-configuring of the current UK, and as a supremely thoughtful and witty writer. This collection of his writings illustrates the evolution of his ideas and will be invaluable. Whether one agrees with Nairn or not, his arguments always make one think afresh. LINDA COLLEY, Professor of History, Princeton University