Welcome to My Site
Formation
Born in Freuchie, Fife, Scotland, educated in the Scottish public school system through to graduation as M.A. in Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, 1956. After a period of study at the Edinburgh College of Art, my original philosophical interests were in aesthetics, under the influence of Benedetto Croce. His Aesthetics as Science of Expression and General Linguistics (1902) was the most important influence. I moved from Art College to the University of Edinburgh, intending to follow an 
Honours Course in Fine Art; but once there, transferred to work in the Departments of Logic and Metaphysics, and Moral Philosophy. I later studied at Oxford University with Iris Murdoch, in Italy at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and at the University of Dijon with Jean Domarchi. There, Antonio Gramsci’s Quaderni del Carcere became another enduring influence, introducing me to the worlds of philology, politics and Marxist speculation. During the nineteen-sixties I worked at Hornsey College of Art, London — where there was an important student movement and occupation in 1968-9 — and also became associated with the New Left Review. Later, I worked as a researcher in the Amsterdam Transnational Institute, associated with Washington’s Institute for Policy Studies. My colleagues included Eqbal Ahmad, John Gittings, Susan George and others. This overlapped with a return to Scotland, where I helped to set up the Scottish International Institute in Edinburgh. Its aim was to contribute to the national revival of the ‘seventies, and its supporters included Neal Ascherson, Peter Chiene, and Michael Spens. 1977 saw the appearance of the first edition of The Break-up of Britain (New Left Books, later Verso Books), which anticipated changes over the last decades of the century — still continuing in the present. Following the defeat of the first Scottish Home Rule referendum in 1979, I remained in Scotland and worked for some years in commercial television in Glasgow. My study The Enchanted Glass was published in 1988, an analysis of the British Monarchy. It was made into a Channel 4 documentary film by Les Wilson, in 1989.
Globalization and Nationalism: Edinburgh to Melbourne
In the ‘nineties I helped to found and taught the ‘Nationalism Studies’ course at Edinburgh University’s Graduate School. Faces of Nationalism and After Britain were also published in this period. I spent two years (1994-5) working in Ernest Geller’s Centre for the Study of Nationalism, at the Prague College of the Central European University. After leaving Edinburgh in 2000 I was invited to teach in the School of Social & Political Inquiry of Monash University, Melbourne (2001), then moved to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University) when the Globalization Research unit was set up there by Professors Mary Kalantzis and Paul James in 2002. RMIT Globalizatio
n studies have focused mainly on the politics and culture of the post-1989 globalization process. Without denying that market forces remain a necessary condition of these changes, we have looked for sufficient conditions as well: the politics and culture of how societies are remaking themselves in a more unified world. Wide-angled research is required for this, and our efforts now extend from the ‘politics of the body’ and bio-technology, via local communities and government, to the fate of nationalism within an altering international arena. A deep influence on my thinking has come from Bill Cope’s Common Ground organization based on Melbourne, both in conference organization and in publishing. It was Common Ground Publishing that brought out the 3rd edition of Break-up of Britain in 2003.
Age of Humanism?
My own research has continued to be in this field, continuing work begun in Edinburgh, building on Oxford, Pisa, Dijon and Amsterdam, and constantly affected by developments on the ground — notably in Scotland. Extreme positions have of course been taken up, like the ‘dissolution’ of the nation-state, or its diametric opposite — an exacerbation of identity reactions as ‘anti-globalism’. It seems more likely that both nationality and ‘internationalism’ are changing their skins under globalizing conditions, and taking paths unforeseen over the 1870-1989 era. Research in this 
dimension needs a combination of theoretical criticism, and scanning of new political initiatives and projects. With Paul James this was attempted in Global Matrix (2005, Pluto Press). In the same year I published a critique of the works of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt in The London Review of Books, followed by a consideration of Jacques Attali’s Karl Marx: l’esprit du monde, a reappraisal of Marxism The latter was presented first as a research seminar at RMIT, in late 2005. On the new politics side, I was able to visit the G8 meeting in Scotland, with an accompanying report, on both the event and the July terrorist attacks on London (details, see below). An autobiographical essay on cultural exile was published in Spirits of the Age (Saltire Society, Edinburgh, ISBN 0854110879), in August 2005. And at the same time I attended and spoke at the Future of the Humanities (Common Ground) conference in Cambridge, on the theme of ‘Democratic Warming’ (http://commongroundpublishing.com/publishing.html)
My work at RMIT is devoted to redefinitions of Humanism, in the tradition established in the later 20th century by the logical and philosophical work of Georg Henrik Von Wright (1916-2003). Farther background on this and other issues raised here can be found via a web-site to which I have contributed: <www.opendemocracy.net>, including a ‘birthday tribute’ published on June 1st, 2007.
BOOKS:
Beginning of the End (with Angelo Quattrocchi) 1968, 2nd edition, Preface by Tariq Ali, 1998, Verso Books, London & New York (ISBN1859842909).
The Left Against Europe, 1973, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, England (ISBN 0140217657)
Atlantic Europe (Editor, and Introduction), 1976, Transnational Institute, Amsterdam.
The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-nationalism, New Left Books, London 1977, 2nd edition, Verso Books, London, 1981 (ISBN 0860917061); 3rd edition, CommonGround Publishing, Melbourne, 2003 (ISBN 1-86335-508-1).
Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited, Verso Books, London 1997 (ISBN 1859841945).
Pariah: Misfortunes of the British Kingdom, Verso Books, London & New York 2002 (ISBN 1859846572).
Global Matrix: Nationalism, Globalism and State Terrorism (with Paul James), Pluto Press, London & New York 2005 (ISBN 0 74532290 5 and 0745322913).
Globalizing Empires, Old and New (with Paul James), 2006, Sage Publications, London (ISBN 1 412919541 Hb).
After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland, Granta, London 2000 (ISBN 1862072930).
The Enchanted Glass: Britain and its Monarchy, Cape and (2nd edition) Radius/Random House, London & New York (ISBN 0091729602).
ARTICLES and CHAPTERS:
‘Break-up: Twenty-five Years On’, 2004, in Scotland in Theory: Reflections on Culture and Literature, edited by E. Bell and G. Miller, Rodopi Publishing, Amsterdam & New York.
‘Disorientations From Down Under: the Old Country in Retrospect’ 2002, in Tomorrow’s Scotland, edited G.Hassan and C.Warhurst, London.
‘Death in Canada: Misfortunes of Ethnicity’, Edinburgh Review, 2004.
‘Mario and the Magician’, New Left Review (Second Series) No. 9, 2001.
‘Farewell Britannia: Break-up or New Union?’, New Left Review (Second Series) No.7, 2001.
‘Byzantium’, Arena Magazine, April 2008.
‘Democracy and Genocide’, Arena Journal (Melbourne) New Series N.16, 2000/1.
‘Union on the Rocks?’, New Left Review, Second Series No.43, Jan-Feb 2007.
‘The New Furies’, New Left Review, Second Series No. 37, Jan-Feb. 2006
‘Black Pluto’s Door: After Sept. 11th’,www.opendemocracy.net, October 2001.
‘The Lord of the Rings: Ethnicity in Your Dreams’, www.opendemocracy.net , February 2002.
‘Authoritarian Man: the Axis of Good’, www.opendemocracy.net, July 2003.
Professor Tom Nairn, Globalism Research Centre, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Victoria, Australia P.O. Box 2476
