Anthony Barnett (Edinburgh, OK): I'm up in Edinburgh where I went to hear Tom Nairn deliver last night's 16th Edinburgh Lecture Globalization and Nationalism: The New Deal? (Republished in openDemocracy.) He was introduced by the government's First Minister Alex Salmond who hosted a reception afterwards. Here is a picture of the two of them, the First Minister is just sitting down after lauding the speaker. I think I need a new camera but it is the only picture there is.
Tom argues that just as the first stage of industrialisation demanded relatively large states so now the new form of globalisation favours small nations. Not because 'small is beautiful'. That is just another form of sizism (which leads what he called "The Body Builders" to scorn small countries). But because for smaller societies "All we can do is our own thing". Unreasonable? It is the only way, he insisted, countries like Scotland can be reasonable. If the British state had offered genuine equity perhaps a democratic federation might have been possible. But by being utterly incapable of reforming itself, Westminster had left Scotland no alternative - and the global forces at work support self-government without the 'ism'. A point Salmond saluted in his concluding remarks. For Tom agrees that chauvinism as we have known it, ie great nation nationalism that began in the 1860s, is on the way out:
Yes, possibly blood is draining out of the '-ism'; but not out of nationalities, identities, cultural contrasts, and the wish (or the determination) to have, or to win, different forms of collective 'say' in the brave new globe.
PS: for later press coverage and links see here
