Globalisation and Nationalism
In the ‘nineties I helped to found and taught the ‘Nationalism Studies’ course at Edinburgh University’s Graduate School, after a period of some years working in television. 
During the same 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.
During the same 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 Globalization 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.
My own research has been in the latter field, continuing work begun in Edinburgh, and also looking back to earlier studies like The Breakup of Britain (1977, 3nd edition, Melbourne 2003), and Faces of Nationalism (Verso, London 1998). Extreme positions have been taken up, like the ‘dissolution’ of the nation-state, or its opposite — an exacerbation of identity reactions against globality. 
But it seems more likely that both nationality and internationalism are changing their skins under globalizing conditions, to take paths unforeseen over the 1870-1989 era. Researching in this dimension needs a combination of theoretical criticism, and scanning of new political initiatives and projects. In 2005, the former was represented (e.g.) by a critique of the works of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, published in The London Review of Books, followed by 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 left). An autobiographical essay on cultural exile was published in Spirits of the Age (Saltire Society, Edinburgh, ISBN 0854110879), in August 2005. At the same time I attended and spoke at the Future of the Humanities (Common Ground) conference in Cambridge.
But it seems more likely that both nationality and internationalism are changing their skins under globalizing conditions, to take paths unforeseen over the 1870-1989 era. Researching in this dimension needs a combination of theoretical criticism, and scanning of new political initiatives and projects. In 2005, the former was represented (e.g.) by a critique of the works of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, published in The London Review of Books, followed by 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 left). An autobiographical essay on cultural exile was published in Spirits of the Age (Saltire Society, Edinburgh, ISBN 0854110879), in August 2005. At the same time I attended and spoke at the Future of the Humanities (Common Ground) conference in Cambridge.
In 2006 I plan to attend the World Bank ‘Ethics Forum’ in Oxford, in April, and also to travel to Russia for a lecture and seminar at the Eurasia Institute, Moscow, comparing the British and Russian post-imperial experiences. The lecture will also revisit former debates with Francis Fukuyama on the breakup of Britain (in Prospect magazine), under the title: ‘From the End of History to the Revival of Wilsonism’. The follow-up to last year’s CommonGround Humanities conference is at Tunis, in July. These and other texts will be published in book form as Global Nations (Verso Books, London & NY, forthcoming in late 2006). In 2007, the 300th anniversary of the formation of the United Kingdom state, I also hope to compile a thirty-year update report — ‘ End of a Union: Breakup or Breakdown?’’
A revised application to the ARC has been submitted for continuing support in pursuing these researches over the period 2006-2008. At the moment I’m writing some reflections on John Howard’s decade, continuing a constitutional argument started in ‘Australian Election Diary’, 18th November 2004, in the LRB. ‘The wraiths, surprisingly,/ singing with the clear voices of young boys./ The angels clapping the rhythm. As he watches/ for morning, for the dark to give way and show/ his landfall, the new country, his native land.’
Jack Gilbert, ‘Looking at Pittsburgh from Paris’. in Refusing Heaven (2005)
Professor Tom Nairn
Pluto Press, March 2005
