Author Archives: jshearn

Michael Lind’s new book The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Metropolitan Elite (2020, Atlantic Books) is a compact argument aimed at a general readership.  In it Lind makes the case for a revival of ‘democratic pluralism’, his term for the post-WWII left-right consensus politics of the US and Europe, exemplified by FDR’s ‘NewContinue reading “Michael Lind—Marx or List?”

Two things primed me to write a blog about Francis Fukuyama’s new book Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition. First, last week I gave a lecture to students on our MSc in Nationalism Studies on the key theoretical ideas of Liah Greenfeld.  I was explaining to them the central role of theContinue reading “Dignity and the Modern Nation”

As I begin to write this on 19 October, 2019, Michael Gove is speaking for the government in Parliament against the Letwin Amendment, which requires that implementing legislation be passed before the Prime Minister’s ‘Brexit Deal’ is approved by Parliament.  Once again, he gives the refrain that respect for democracy requires that Parliament support aContinue reading “The Letter and the Spirit of Democracy”

In Jan-Werner Müller’s recent short study What is Populism? (2017, Penguin) he defines it as a form of politics characterised by anti-elitism, the imagined oneness of ‘the people’ and their representatives (regardless of the mechanisms of representation), and the categorisation of political opponents as ‘enemies’ outside the body of ‘the people’.  Müller calls populism ‘theContinue reading “The UK Parliament and Instrumental Populism”

Some might argue that the wave of scholarship on nationalism stimulated by decolonisation and subsequently the collapse of the USSR has run its course.  Many leading scholars of this era have departed this world—Gellner, Smith, Hobsbawm, Anderson, and Connor.   On the other hand, it is easy to point to current developments—Trump, Brexit, Windrush, Syria, NorthContinue reading “The Relevance of Nationalism Today”

(Jan. 2017) Presidential inaugural addresses tend to be broad vision statements with gestures towards national unity and purpose. A few policy directions may be outlined, but that is not their main purpose. Donald Trump’s address on 20 January 2017, sits strangely in this genre, stylistically nodding in this general direction, but primarily addressed to hisContinue reading “Trump’s Inaugural Address: Power, Identity, Narrative”

(October 2014) When I was a graduate student studying anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was conventional to divide anthropological theory between ‘idealist’ and ‘materialist’ approaches.  Most students found this distinction meaningful, but at the same time too stark.  Today this distinction comes back to haunt me. Continue reading “Whither Scotland Post-Referendum”

(Sept. 2014) So far I have been relatively quiet about my personal views in regard to the Scottish referendum on independence on 18 September.  But some close to me have wished that I would join the conversation.  There are two things to say at the outset.  First, although I have been resident in Scotland forContinue reading “Referendum Reservations”

(From: ISRF Bulletin, Sept. 2014) As I write this Scotland, where I live, is about a week away from an historic referendum on the question of whether or not to become independent from the UK.  The polls have narrowed—at the moment it is neck and neck between the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ options.  In this contextContinue reading “On Nationalism and Freedom”