Thanks. I've pre ordered the paperback, so will wait ...keep thinking I need to pluck up the courage and will power to read Debt. My son bought it for me (proud dad syndrome!),but it's sat there like my copies of Ulyssees ,The Anarchy and Peter Wilson's Magnus opus on the Thirty Years war !
Really interesting. I'm English (Irish and Scots forebears ), your Scottish. As an amateur historian (admittedly with a history degree , gained during the Marxist ascendancy ),I'm really interested in the rise of the nation state and how that began to frame our thinking about our personal and political boundaries. When stories ,narratives and rituals to underpin nation state stories arise and how left and right as traditionally conceived claim their own meta narrative about who 'we' are . Long intro , but do D&D consider this dimension ?
They’re light on nationalism as it emerges, stronger on laying out how diverse the map of possibilities were, leading up to city-states (evolving into states). It’s why I brought Nairn in - the way he talks about nationalism, that it draws on narratives about heritage, and cultural specificity in order to negotiate the modern, tech-capitalist present and future, echoes the way D&D talk about “culture areas”. They both make a claim for the deep diversity represented by the record of human group-forming, but value it at different scales. Interesting that Nairn’s own great mentor was Ernest Gellner, the anthropologist, who I think he grew close to in later years. Thanks for comment M
Thanks. I've pre ordered the paperback, so will wait ...keep thinking I need to pluck up the courage and will power to read Debt. My son bought it for me (proud dad syndrome!),but it's sat there like my copies of Ulyssees ,The Anarchy and Peter Wilson's Magnus opus on the Thirty Years war !
Really interesting. I'm English (Irish and Scots forebears ), your Scottish. As an amateur historian (admittedly with a history degree , gained during the Marxist ascendancy ),I'm really interested in the rise of the nation state and how that began to frame our thinking about our personal and political boundaries. When stories ,narratives and rituals to underpin nation state stories arise and how left and right as traditionally conceived claim their own meta narrative about who 'we' are . Long intro , but do D&D consider this dimension ?
They’re light on nationalism as it emerges, stronger on laying out how diverse the map of possibilities were, leading up to city-states (evolving into states). It’s why I brought Nairn in - the way he talks about nationalism, that it draws on narratives about heritage, and cultural specificity in order to negotiate the modern, tech-capitalist present and future, echoes the way D&D talk about “culture areas”. They both make a claim for the deep diversity represented by the record of human group-forming, but value it at different scales. Interesting that Nairn’s own great mentor was Ernest Gellner, the anthropologist, who I think he grew close to in later years. Thanks for comment M