ABSTRACT
Nationalisms and the nation-state are well set to retain an intriguing place in the geographies of the new millennium. All this despite predictions of the increasing irrelevance of such identity referents posited by fin-de-siècle futurologists, politicians and academics. Tapping a now familiar Zeitgeist, these commentators on globalisation have cited the blanket spread of corporate capitalism, the hegemony of international financial markets, the establishment of supra-national political agreements and the all-pervasive influence of multi-national media and technologies on ‘independent’ national cultures as key factors in an inevitable process of homogenisation (Fukuyama 1989; Giddens 1990; Ohmae 1989). Yet across Europe, the recent rise and re-emergence of nationalisms, whether expressed through violence or quiet consensus, stand testimony to the continued importance of common identities fused around the romantic nationalist idea of the nation-state. Paradoxically, the persistence of an ethnically bounded concept of belonging also gives the lie to the popularly held belief that nationhood is itself founded on stability, traditionalism or permanence. In a British context, recently instituted changes to centuries-old constitutional agreements have allowed for the devolution of political power to Wales and Scotland.1 As argued by MacLeod and Osmond in this volume, such important concessions reflect a marked revival, and reworking, of Celtic nationalisms previously marginalised from the political map of the British Isles. With majority approval from the resident populations of each country, debate and decisions on specific areas of government policy have been ceded to a national assembly in Cardiff, and more definitively still, a parliament in Edinburgh.
