> Friends and colleagues may be interested in the following book, which has just been published:
>
> The Persistence of Nationalism: from Imagined Communities to Urban Encounters
> by Angharad Closs Stephens
>
> More information about the book, including a preview of the Introduction, is available via this link:
>
> http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415623452/
>
>
> This is a book about the difficulties of thinking and acting politically in ways that refuse the politics of nationalism. It offers a detailed study of how contemporary attempts by theorists of cosmopolitanism, globalism and multiculturalism to go beyond the nation often reproduce key aspects of a nationalist imaginary. It argues that the challenge of resisting nationalism will require more than a shift in the scale of politics – from the national up to the global, or down to the local – and more than a shift in how we count politics – to an emphasis on diversity and multiculturalism. In order to avoid the grip of ‘nationalist thinking’, the book argues that we need to reopen the question of what it means to imagine community. It does so by way of various encounters with urban life.
>
> Set against the backdrop of the imaginative geographies of the ‘War on Terror’, the book shows how critical interventions often work in collaboration with nationalist politics. It claims that a nationalist imaginary includes powerful under- standings of freedom, subjectivity, sovereignty and political space/time which must all be placed under question if we want to avoid reproducing ideas about ‘us’ and ‘them’. Drawing on insights from feminist, cultural and postcolonial studies as well as critical approaches to International Relations and Geography, this book presents a unique and refreshing approach to the politics of nationalism.
>
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> ‘The Persistence of Nationalism convincingly shows a way out of the either/or quandary between nationalism and cosmopolitanism by bringing the city back at the centre of the debate. By investigating how people actually develop elective affinities, affective investments and identifications through quotidian encounters, it shows how people negotiate workable terms of living together. This is the best critical introduction to nationalism from an urban perspective.’
>
> - Engin Isin, The Open University, UK
>
>
> If you are interested in ordering a copy for your libraries, you can do by filling out a Librarian Recommendation form here:
>
> http://www.routledge.com/resources/librarian_recommendation/9780415623452/
>
>
> Best wishes,
> Angharad
>
>
>
> Dr Angharad Closs Stephens
> Lecturer in Human Geography
> Durham University
>
>
>
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