Tom Nairn
Encyclopedia
Tom Nairn Born in born 2 June 1932 in Freuchie
, Fife
) is a Scottish
theorist of nationalism
.
Prof Tom Nairn is a Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University
. Previously he was Innovation Professor of Nationalism and Cultural Diversity at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
, Australia, from 2001 to January 2010, and a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study of Durham University (2009).
and Edinburgh College of Art
before graduating from the University of Edinburgh
with an MA in Philosophy in 1956. During the 1960s he taught at various institutions including the University of Birmingham (1965-6), coming to prominence in the occupation movement at Hornsey College of Art
(1967-70), after which he was dismissed. He was at the Transnational Institute
, Amsterdam
from 1972-76, and then worked as a journalist and TV researcher (mainly for Channel 4 and Scottish Television, Glasgow) before a year at the Central European University (1994-95) and then setting up and running a Masters course on Nationalism at Edinburgh University (1995-1999).
He is considered one of the key thinkers of the (British) New Left
. From 1962, with Perry Anderson
in New Left Review
, he developed a thesis (the "Nairn-Anderson thesis") to explain why Britain did not develop in a 'normal' way, which was defined as the continental European movement to anti-clericalism
and Republicanism
since the 1789 French Revolution
.
Nairn has long been an advocate of European integration, an argument he put forward in The Left Against Europe (1973), when leftist opinion in the UK
was very much against the idea.
He has been an advocate of the devolution
of power to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, and criticised the 90s/2000s Labour government for not giving those bodies enough power. An anthology of NLR articles, The Break-Up of Britain (1977, revised 1982) is the best known of Nairn's books on the nationalism theme. It is a Marxist critique of the emergence of worldwide nationalism. Essentially, Nairn contends that imperialism from the core countries (Western Europe) amongst the peripheral nations (Africa, Asia, Australia, etc.) motivated the peripheral elites to mobilize their exploited masses. As such, they created powerful myths and stories based on local artefacts and local happenings. The peripheral intelligentsia, as he denotes them, were inspired by both Romanticism
and Populism
. In a chapter devoted to him, Enoch Powell
is placed in both traditions.
His republican
inclinations meant that his The Enchanted Glass (1988) was one of the earliest serious modern investigations in to the British Monarchy from an abolitionist perspective. It won the Scottish Book of the Year Award. Here and elsewhere Nairn uses the term 'Ukania' to suggest the irrational and Ruritania
n nature of the British constitutional monarchy. His original source for the term is the nickname 'Kakania' that Robert Musil
uses for the dual Austro-Hungarian
monarchy in The Man Without Qualities
.
, from the London School of Economics
, who contends that Nairn never defines the term "nationalism
". What Smith says, however, is that Nairn characterises it as a "militant movement by the community vis-a-vis
the imperialists, and this movement supplied the notion of a shared destiny."
and contributes regularly to openDemocracy
as well as other publications.
Freuchie
Freuchie is a village in Fife, Scotland, at the foot of the Lomond Hills, and near Falkland. The nearest major town is Glenrothes located 4 miles to the south.The name derives from the Scottish Gaelic, fraoch, meaning heather....
, Fife
Fife
Fife is a council area and former county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire...
) is a Scottish
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
theorist of nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
.
Prof Tom Nairn is a Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University
Durham University
The University of Durham, commonly known as Durham University, is a university in Durham, England. It was founded by Act of Parliament in 1832 and granted a Royal Charter in 1837...
. Previously he was Innovation Professor of Nationalism and Cultural Diversity at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
RMIT University
RMIT University is an Australian public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. It has two branches, referred to as RMIT University in Australia and RMIT International University in Vietnam....
, Australia, from 2001 to January 2010, and a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study of Durham University (2009).
Life and outline of his arguments
He attended High School in DunfermlineDunfermline
Dunfermline is a town and former Royal Burgh in Fife, Scotland, on high ground from the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. According to a 2008 estimate, Dunfermline has a population of 46,430, making it the second-biggest settlement in Fife. Part of the town's name comes from the Gaelic word...
and Edinburgh College of Art
Edinburgh College of Art
Edinburgh College of Art is an art school in Edinburgh, Scotland, providing tertiary education in art and design disciplines for over two thousand students....
before graduating from the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
with an MA in Philosophy in 1956. During the 1960s he taught at various institutions including the University of Birmingham (1965-6), coming to prominence in the occupation movement at Hornsey College of Art
Hornsey College of Art
Hornsey College of Art is a former college centred in Crouch End, London, England. Since 2008, the building has been a part of Coleridge Primary School, upon its expansion to four form entry...
(1967-70), after which he was dismissed. He was at the Transnational Institute
Transnational Institute
Transnational Institute is an international think tank for progressive politics. It was established in 1973 in Amsterdam and serves as a network for scholars and activists...
, Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
from 1972-76, and then worked as a journalist and TV researcher (mainly for Channel 4 and Scottish Television, Glasgow) before a year at the Central European University (1994-95) and then setting up and running a Masters course on Nationalism at Edinburgh University (1995-1999).
He is considered one of the key thinkers of the (British) New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
. From 1962, with Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson is a British Leftist intellectual, historian, and political essayist. He is often identified with the post-1956 Western Marxism of the New Left in Europe. He is Professor of History and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and an editor of the New Left Review. He...
in New Left Review
New Left Review
New Left Review is a 160-page journal, published every two months from London, devoted to world politics, economy and culture. Often compared to the French-language Les Temps modernes, it is associated with Verso Books , and regularly features the essays of authorities on contemporary social...
, he developed a thesis (the "Nairn-Anderson thesis") to explain why Britain did not develop in a 'normal' way, which was defined as the continental European movement to anti-clericalism
Anti-clericalism
Anti-clericalism is a historical movement that opposes religious institutional power and influence, real or alleged, in all aspects of public and political life, and the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen...
and Republicanism
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
since the 1789 French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
.
Nairn has long been an advocate of European integration, an argument he put forward in The Left Against Europe (1973), when leftist opinion in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
was very much against the idea.
He has been an advocate of the devolution
Devolution
Devolution is the statutory granting of powers from the central government of a sovereign state to government at a subnational level, such as a regional, local, or state level. Devolution can be mainly financial, e.g. giving areas a budget which was formerly administered by central government...
of power to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, and criticised the 90s/2000s Labour government for not giving those bodies enough power. An anthology of NLR articles, The Break-Up of Britain (1977, revised 1982) is the best known of Nairn's books on the nationalism theme. It is a Marxist critique of the emergence of worldwide nationalism. Essentially, Nairn contends that imperialism from the core countries (Western Europe) amongst the peripheral nations (Africa, Asia, Australia, etc.) motivated the peripheral elites to mobilize their exploited masses. As such, they created powerful myths and stories based on local artefacts and local happenings. The peripheral intelligentsia, as he denotes them, were inspired by both Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
and Populism
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
. In a chapter devoted to him, Enoch Powell
Enoch Powell
John Enoch Powell, MBE was a British politician, classical scholar, poet, writer, and soldier. He served as a Conservative Party MP and Minister of Health . He attained most prominence in 1968, when he made the controversial Rivers of Blood speech in opposition to mass immigration from...
is placed in both traditions.
His republican
Republicanism in the United Kingdom
Republicanism in the United Kingdom is the movement which seeks to remove the British monarchy and replace it with a republic that has a non-hereditary head of state...
inclinations meant that his The Enchanted Glass (1988) was one of the earliest serious modern investigations in to the British Monarchy from an abolitionist perspective. It won the Scottish Book of the Year Award. Here and elsewhere Nairn uses the term 'Ukania' to suggest the irrational and Ruritania
Ruritania
Ruritania is a fictional country in central Europe which forms the setting for three books by Anthony Hope: The Prisoner of Zenda , The Heart of Princess Osra , and Rupert of Hentzau...
n nature of the British constitutional monarchy. His original source for the term is the nickname 'Kakania' that Robert Musil
Robert Musil
Robert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels...
uses for the dual Austro-Hungarian
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
monarchy in The Man Without Qualities
The Man Without Qualities
The Man Without Qualities is an unfinished novel in three books by the Austrian writer Robert Musil....
.
Criticisms
One of the most powerful critiques comes from ethno-symbolist Anthony D. SmithAnthony D. Smith
Anthony D. Smith is Professor Emeritus of Nationalism and Ethnicity at the London School of Economics, and is considered one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of nationalism studies...
, from the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
, who contends that Nairn never defines the term "nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
". What Smith says, however, is that Nairn characterises it as a "militant movement by the community vis-a-vis
Vis-à-vis
Vis-à-vis may refer to:* Vis-à-vis * "Vis à Vis" , an episode of Star Trek: Voyager...
the imperialists, and this movement supplied the notion of a shared destiny."
Major works
He has written many articles for the London Review of BooksLondon Review of Books
The London Review of Books is a fortnightly British magazine of literary and intellectual essays.-History:The LRB was founded in 1979, during the year-long lock-out at The Times, by publisher A...
and contributes regularly to openDemocracy
OpenDemocracy
openDemocracy is a website for debate about international politics and culture, offering news and opinion articles from established academics, journalists and policymakers covering current issues in world affairs. openDemocracy was founded in 2000 by Anthony Barnett, David Hayes, Susan Richards and...
as well as other publications.
- Quattrocchi A and Nairn, T (1968) The Beginning of the End: France, May 1968 Panther Books
- Students and Staff of Hornsey College of Art (1969) The Hornsey Affair, Penguin Books
- Nairn, T. (1973) The Left against Europe, Penguin
- Nairn, T. (1975) "The Modern Janus". New Left Review. i/94, November-December [also reprinted in Break-up]
- Nairn, T. (1977) The Break-up of Britain : crisis and neonationalism, London: NLB (2nd ed. 1981 Verso; 3rd 2003 Common Ground Pub)
- Nairn, T (1988) The Enchanted Glass: Britain and Its Monarchy, London: Radius (2nd ed 1994, Vintage)
- Nairn, T (1992) Auld enemies: essays from the "Nairn on Monday" column, The Scotsman, Glasgow : Common Cause.
- Nairn, T (1997) Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited Verso. (2nd ed. 2005).
- Quattrocchi A and Nairn, T (1998) The Beginning of the End: France, May 1968, Verso.
- Nairn, T (2001) After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland, Granta.
- Nairn, T (2002) Pariah: Misfortunes of the British Kingdom, Verso.
- Paul JamesPaul James (academic)Paul James is Professor of Globalization and Cultural Diversity at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, and a prolific writer on globalisation and social theory.-Background:...
and Nairn, T (eds.) (2005) Global Matrix: Nationalism, Globalism and State-terrorism, Pluto - Nairn, T (2006) Global Nations, Verso
- Paul JamesPaul James (academic)Paul James is Professor of Globalization and Cultural Diversity at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, and a prolific writer on globalisation and social theory.-Background:...
and Nairn, T (eds.) (2006) Globalization and Violence, London: Sage. - Nairn, T (2006) Gordon Brown: 'bard of Britishness, Cardiff: Institute of Welsh Affairs
- Nairn, T (2008) "Globalisation and nationalism: the new deal", The Edinburgh lecture, 2008
- Articles on OpenDemocracy.net
- Nairn, T, Davies, B & Kay, N (2008) Scotland and Globalisation. In H. Reid & P.H. Scott (eds) The Independence Book: Scotland in Today's World Edinburgh: Luath Press.
- Nairn, T. (2008) Byzantium. Arena Magazine.