Abstract
For Alastair Bonnett, nostalgia is not only variable but also unsettling and riven with contradictions and dilemmas. It has also both spatial and temporal dimensions, yet, as Bonnett points out, the latter have, since the late 19th century, won out over the former and led to their neglect. In seeking to redress this conceptual narrowing, he focuses on the ways in which nostalgia animates the geographical imagination. He begins by addressing the global dynamics of nostalgia and then, because nostalgia occurs on many different scales, turns to more regional and local cases. He looks at the role of nostalgia in both global capitalism and anti-capitalism, and at its role in environmentalism and debates about social constructionism. One chapter explores the ideas of the Indian social philosopher, Ashis Nandy, dealing with tradition and loss and the uses of nostalgia as a cultural resource for the poor. This takes Bonnett on to consider migrant nostalgias – the yearnings of displaced people for distant homelands – and the persistence of attachment in nostalgic longings for one’s home city. A final chapter focusses on three sites of nostalgic discovery: the forest, the home and the local walk. The book is an extension and explanation of Bonnett’s previous discussion in Left in the Past: Radicalism and the Politics of Nostalgia, seeing nostalgia as both a product of modernity and a force that exceeds and challenges modernity. It is a welcome addition to the recent studies of nostalgia that have broken new ground and contested old assumptions and shibboleths.