Global Matrix

Globalization has brought with it many difficult and contradictory phenomena: violence, deep national insecurities, religious divisions and individual insecurities. This book takes a critical look at three key areas – globalism, nationalism, and state-terror – to confront common mythologies and identify the root causes of the problems we face.

Too many commentators still argue that globalization is predominantly a neo-liberal economic phenomenon; that nation-states are on the way out, and that terror is something that primarily comes from below. Global Matrix exposes the limitations of this argument. The authors explore four main questions:

— What is the cultural-political nature of contemporary globalization?
— How adequate, particularly in the context of nation-states, is a politics of democratic nationalism?
— How are we to understand new and old nations in the context of changes across the late twentieth century and into the present?
— Where does national violence come from and what does it mean for a 'war on terror'?

Written by two leading scholars, this is a lucid study of what place the nation-state has in a globalizing world that will appeal to students across the political and social sciences.