Thoughtland

Map of Thoughtland: Newsnet Scotland

Newsnet Scotland was launched on March 2010 to address a perceived imbalance in the reporting of Scottish News and current affairs.  We believe that a nation without a balanced media is the poorer for it. Staffed by volunteers Newsnet is the fastest growing news outlet in Scotland, each month we enjoy double digit readership growth.

via www.newsnetscotland.com

I was chatting with Mick Fealty of Northern-Irish-Huff-Post-esque Slugger O'Toole today about the crisis of newspapers - and how they might learn from the way that passionate user communities stream a flow of free editorial into their networks. Newsnet Scotland is a paradigm example of the phenomenon. It was set up by some Scottish independence supporting activists and coders, and is explicitly aimed at redressing what they percieve to be (and arguably is) a media imbalance in the reporting of independence politics in the MSM (Mainstream Scottish Media), ie a bias towards "Unionist" (pro-UK) perspectives. Amid some kitschy cultural moments, Newsnet Scotland does a great service in giving its activist constituency a mix of curated pieces from independence-learning mainstream writers, and "commissioned" pieces from a range of activist voices (Thoughtland has already been sought out). Revenue? Trying to surmount the usual online ad hump. But vibrant and authentic to the mood of the Scottish Spring. 

Map of Thoughtland: AFTERnow

Western civilisation has conquered great health perils in the past. But the peculiarly modern malaise seems resistant to treatment. Obesity, depression, addiction, loss of wellbeing – these are issues which sap the resources and spirit of modern practitioners. The AfterNow Project seeks to trace the development of our current situation. In six 5-minute introductory videos – backed up by a dozen 10-minute audio podcasts and over 30 short papers – we unpack the ideas which shape and limit contemporary responses... and look to a brave new future for public health.

via www.afternow.co.uk

Very impressive site from Glasgow University's Public Health and Health Policy Section, the brain child of its head Phil Hanlon (with input from the IFF's Andrew Lyon). AFTERnow does a multimedia assault on the agenda of wellbeing (and its corollary, "ill-being") in public life. (Interesting linkage note: I was alerted to its existence from this tweet, which was essentially telling me not to go listening to wild-eyed Italian autonomists for my anti-consumerist critique, when it was right on my doorstep. This is how exactly how a Thoughtland should operate, citizens...)

Map of Thoughtland: Ewan Morrison's Tales From The Mall

Anecdotes, jokes, urban myths, tales of horror, boredom, infatuation or even just shopping – almost everybody has a story to tell about something that happened to them in a shopping mall. For example, you may have heard the one about the man who was accidentally locked inside John Lewis for a night and slept in the bedding section; or the one about how an entire mall had to be closed for a day because of something ‘un-hygenic’ that fell out of somebody’s handbag; or the one about the teenager who caught her mum buying lingerie with her lover in Victoria’s Secret. There are stories of love and hate; of how communities have been transformed for the better or completely destroyed by malls.

 Tales from the Mall started life as a collection of short stories by myself. Since the research material turned out to be so rich, I’ve decided to expand the project, to create a collection of Scottish ‘mall stories’.

via ewanmorrison.com

Ewan is an ambitious, contemporary Scottish novelist, but who began as a filmmaker, and who has roamed promiscuously around the image industries before settling down at his laptop to chart the libidinal landscapes of Scotland/UK. Tales From The Mall is a multimedia act of storytelling around modern consumer experience. Everything Ewan does is informed by a very sharp and well-read critical intellect. Worth tracking. 

Map of Thoughtland: Urban Learning Space [archive]

Urban Learning Space was established with core funding from Scottish Enterprise Glasgow. We are working with people around Scotland to address real life challenges. Our network of experts are using transformational design practice to promote individuals' capacities for change. Nurturing an innate capacity for learning by using collaborative design processes, we create new approaches. These range from the building of creativity tools to support innovation, transforming public spaces into learning landscapes, and harnessing emerging technologies to explore new learning contexts

via www.labgroup.org.uk

 

Strange what the Net can recover. Thoughtland was involved in a vibrant, Glasgow-based think-tank called Urban Learning Space in the mid-2000's, which was funded to explore new kinds of technology-enabled learning in city environments.

Closed down in 2009, we decided on a whim to see what traces remained... and found this archive of podcasts of their seminar series from its final years. Presentations by the futurist Michel Bauwens, ex-Microsoft guru Chris Yapp, and the educationalist Stephen Heppell are particularly useful. Download them before a gust of digital wind blows them finally away.

Map of Thoughtland: Architecture + Design Scotland

 
Architecture and Design Scotland (A+DS) is Scotland's champion for excellence in placemaking, architecture and planning. We are an Executive NDPB of the Scottish Government. A+DS aims to support the creation of places that work, which provide people with real choices and, are ultimately, places where people want to be.

We champion the highest standards in architecture and placemaking across all sectors, advocating a better understanding of the importance of quality design in both the public and private sectors.

via www.ads.org.uk

Coming to our attention via their current show at The Lighthouse, Architecture and Design Scotland are an officially recognised champion of architecture and design, complementary (we imagine) to the RIAS. They have a steadily accumulating Reports and Studies section. 

Map of Thoughtland: Craig Murray

British democracy has lost its meaning. The political and economic system has come to serve the interests of a tiny elite, vastly wealthier than the run of the population, operating through corporate control. The state itself exists to serve the interests of these corporations, guided by a political class largely devoid of ideological belief and preoccupied with building their own careers and securing their own finances.

via www.craigmurray.org.uk

Thoughtland met Craig Murray at the excellent public event organised by the Scottish Independence Convention in Glasgow a few days ago. His high-profile resignation as Ambassador to Uzbekistan in 2004, accusing the UK government of collusion (along with the CIA) in torture to extract intelligence from 'war on terror' suspects. A "character", as they'd say in the Central Belt - but his blog is a clearly written and extremely well-informed overview of the depradations of the British diplomatic state, from a man who would like an independent Scotland to do a hell of a lot better. 

Map of Thoughtland: Better Nation

Welcome to Better Nation, our new Scottish blog, built on four things its editors share: a love of ideas, an essential optimism, an anoraky obsession with politics, and a particular interest in the nation of Scotland – as it has been, as it stands now, and its future prospects.

The title comes from Dennis Lee, famously quoted by Alasdair Gray (and attributed to Gray on the walls of Holyrood itself): “Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation”. The three of us believe devolution has been a pretty successful endeavour thus far, but that the current constitutional arrangements are unlikely to be the final settled will of the Scottish people.

As a result, it is already a better nation than it was when the Vigil camped out under Calton Hill, but even the most cursory glance around Scotland shows continued poverty, movement away from sustainability, a business sector hardly thriving, a nervous public sector, stretched voluntary organisations and shortcomings in our democracy.

via www.betternation.org

Better Nation is a very healthy sign of the new Scottish ideas-blogosphere - two Green-aligned (but SNP friendly) and one PhD student interested in autonomous movements, turning their pub and phone discussions into a very useful and thoughtful platform for Scottish self-determinist issues. Greens in Scotland are an interesting force - advocates of independence, but critical of the SNP's mainstream economic, energy and infrastructure policies. This will be a space to watch. 

Map of Thoughtland: Simon Yuill

Artist and programmer based in Glasgow. His work addresses coding both in terms of its low-level formal mechanisms and aesthetics and in terms of its higher-level relationships to social structures and systems. These issues are explored through software projects, written texts, discussion, and hands-on workshops.

Following on from Andy Wightman and James Hunter, Simon Yuill is also concerned with the nature of commons in Scottish life (and elsewhere) - but this stretches from the digital commons (in the form of open source code and gaming platforms) to urban-rural struggles (as in the Pollok Free State protest against road development in 90's Glasgow). Yuill's Spring_Alpha project attempted to link traditions of community education/empowerment with the process of games-making - making people aware of the rules that govern social behaviour. His recent exhibition at the CCA, Fields Factories and Workshops, was an extraordinarily rich meditation on how communities come to assert their 'commons' rights. Yuill's essay, 'All Problems of Notation Will Be Solved By The Masses', is the best elaboration of his notion of 'distributive practice' - what Douglas Rushkoff recently summed up as "program or be programmed". One of Scotland's most significant intellectuals and contemporary artists. 

Map of Thoughtland: Andy Wightman

I'm Andy Wightman, the author of Who Owns Scotland and The Poor had no Lawyers. I am an independent writer and researcher on issues of land and democracy with a particular interest in community land rights.

via www.andywightman.com

 

 

One of the frontiers opened up by the Scottish Parliament has been land rights - the Land Reform Act was one of the earliest and most significant pieces of legislation passed in its early years, beginning a process of restitution of control over Scottish territory that is (hopefully) exponential. Andy Wightman has become the foremost engaged intellectual on these issues (following on from James Hunter), and is actively involved in crofting and other community landclaims. His new book, The Poor Had No Lawyers, marks an exciting turn in his thinking towards the status of the commons in Scottish land law (chiming with the work of David Bollier and Nobel-prize winner Elinor Ostrom). 

Map of Thoughtland: Edinburgh University Press

We are committed to furthering knowledge and making innovative and rigorous scholarship available to the widest possible readership through our range of research publications. These include scholarly monographs and reference works as well as materials which are available on-line. The Press also plays a prominent educational role by providing stimulating, well-designed textbooks for students and lecturers. Our main subject areas across our books and journals programmes are: African Studies  * American Studies * Classics  * Critical Editions * Film & Media Studies  * Historical Studies *  Islamic Studies  * Language & Linguistics * Law  * Literary Studies  * Philosophy  * Politics  *  Reference  * Religion * Science and Medical * Scottish Studies 

via www.euppublishing.com

Thoughtland came upon the massed might of Edinburgh University Press at this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival, where its academically-inclined little soul leapt at the range of absurdly-priced works covering one entire shelf - everything from a history of Ibn Khaldun to the Baudrillard Dictionary. We would love to (and intend to) talk to EUP's publishers, and ask them exactly who does buy a slim hardback priced £50 on Deleuze's Hume (tempted, so tempted... but resisted). But a sign of a community of scholars in the rudest health. 

Map of Thoughtland: The David Hume Institute

The David Hume Institute promotes research, analysis and debate on public policy issues. Its work is primarily focused in areas linking economics and law, with a particular interest in the interaction between institutional or legal frameworks and market forces.The offices of the David Hume Institute are based in the historic city of Edinburgh, a city with a rich academic and cultural heritage.

via www.davidhumeinstitute.com

Of the great figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Adam Smith has certainly been the most argued over recently in global intellectual circles, as capitalism's cycles become ever more convulsive. But we think David Hume, at some point, will take centre stage. As this essayist puts it, he hints at the postmodern in the decay of the modern: "rigorous scepticism about causal connections and the self, the use of irony and parody, of thought experiments, and a "naturalism" and focus on feelings as the grounds of belief, morals, and social structure". How we know what we know, epistemology and all that, seems to be the big issue as we observe our own pathological relationship with nature. 

Does the David Hume Institute, run by an ex-banker at RBS, dive into the subtleties excavated by thinkers like Derrida, Deleuze and Cornel West? Ehm, naw. The site looks like it was designed by Hume itself. But they have a half-decent speakers list and document archive. Again, a sleeping giant, with a "new website" promised soon. 

Map of Thoughtland: Central Station

We've made Central Station for creative people who are looking for a place to talk to peers, share work and resources, access information and profile themselves. It's also for people who are interested in the arts, film and design generally - a new way to engage with a broad cross-section of creative work and debate.

We're aiming to broaden, deepen and widen engagement with contemporary art, film and design. We're encouraging creative people to use online technology and share their work with each other and new audiences.

Hopefully Central Station encourages cross-discipline, collaborative practice. We're giving you the space to discuss process, share resources and, if relevant, profile what you're making in a safe and easy-to-use environment.

via www.thisiscentralstation.com

Very welcome creative portal, named after Glasgow's busiest rail stop, which does what it says above. The Bulletin board is particularly vital - a well-curated snapshot of the edgier designers, artists, conceptualists and "makers of work" in Scotland. Particularly delighted to see that a bunch of Scottish Paleofuturists are displaying in Helsinki. Yes they are.

Map of Thoughtland: New Media Scotland

New Media Scotland is a national development agency fostering artist and audience engagement with all forms of new media practice....Our programme supports forms of emergent practice. We seek to innovate and challenge, aesthetically, technically and conceptually. We're excited by projects that blur boundaries, respond to developments in science and technology, and forge new ways ahead for digital culture.

via www.mediascot.org

If you're looking for the Scottish hackerati, you'll find a guide book to their activities here. Their front page curates strange digital performance events and casual games for free download. They enable a number of hacklabs like The Electron Club, DorkbotALBA and Geek Girl Scotland. Their curated Programme reveals a rich culture of new media experimentation. A usefully arty complement to more business oriented digital hubs in Scotland like 38 Minutes.

Map of Thoughtland: The Royal Society of Edinburgh

  The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is an educational charity, registered in Scotland. Independent and non-party-political, we are working to provide public benefit throughout Scotland and by means of a growing international programme. The RSE has a peer-elected, multidisciplinary Fellowship of 1500 men and women who are experts within their fields.

via www.royalsoced.org.uk

Often overlooked, the Royal Society has impeccable First Enlightenment credentials - created in 1783 by Royal Charter for “the advancement of learning and useful knowledge” - and despite a rather schlocky website design, is an active advocate of science and research in Scotland. It has a reasonably busy events program, with audio-video archive. Though the RSE does attempt to cover both the natural and the social sciences, there's little of the transdisciplinary excitement that we currently see in the Royal Society of the Arts in London - nor the same expansive and entrepreneurial approach to fellowship. At a time when Scotland needs to be supporting debate between the scientific agenda on energy and bioscience, and the cultural norms of the country, the RSE is (in our view) something of a sleeping giant.

Map of Thoughtland: Scottish Affairs

Launch of the Digital Archive, May 2009 (updated May 2010) Scottish Affairs is proud to announce the launch of its 'Digital Archive', a rolling programme which will make the full contents of the journal freely available online. Funded through the generosity of The University of Edinburgh Campaign, the Archive will provide an unparalleled and rich resource on Scotland's social and political affairs from 1992 to the current day. The full text contents of issues 5 through 63 are available online now. www.scottishaffairs.org

We come to feature Scottish Affairs on the Map - "Scotland's Longest Running Journal on Contemporary Political and Social Issues", produced by the Institute of Governance at Edinburgh University - in a state of some joy. Defying the usual pointlessly firewalled spirit of most academic journals, they have secured resources to put the contents of issues 5-63 online for free (archive here). Major writings by Christopher Harvie, Tom Nairn, and Scotland's sociologist-general, David McCrone are gathered here. 

Map of Thoughtland: Momus aka Nick Currie

via imomus.com

 

On Wednesday September 1st Momus presented his new album Hypnoprism on Barbara Murdter's show Popkontext on Berlin radio station Reboot FM. Momus played a selection of music and talked (in English) about his new tracks. The show is archived here.

 

On Tuesday 21st September Momus will deliver a 45-minute speaking-singing lecture in Berlin entitled The Emotional Lecture. It happens at the ImageMovement shop in Mitte (Oranienburger Str. 18 10178 Berlin) at the invitation of Andreas Reihse from Kreidler, and is part of a biweekly curated program entitled MOVE #.

The 2010 album from Momus, Hypnoprism, is released in the US and Europe (via labels American Patchwork and Analogue Baroque) at the end of September. The album features on its cover Diamond Eye, a painting by New York-based Japanese artist Misaki Kawai. Design is by James Goggin of Practise. The record can be pre-ordered via iTunes (digital) and Amazon (physical), as well as from the labels themselves.

 

Momus aka Nick Currie would probably be surprised to find himself in a list of contemporary Scottish intellectuals - but this brilliant and notoriously beyond-good-and-evil art songsmith, born in Aberdeen but based in Berlin, wrote himself into the pantheon with The Book of Scotlands, a Borgesian spin through alternative realties of Scotland in which "300 years of Calvinism were replaced with 300 years of Calvino" (Thoughtland's review here). Other than that, he's one of the cleverest minds alive on art, politics and transgression.

Map of Thoughtland: Christopher Harvie MSP

 
Thanks for homing in on my new website. This site is the 'front of house' for my literary and cultural interests, carrying current articles and reviews by me and about my books and public life in Scotland and Europe.

via www.chrisharvie.co.uk

Scotland's historian-statesman, but without much standing-on-his-dignity and unafraid to mix it as a public intellectual. Chris Harvie's prose - analytical, waspish, gag-strewn, recondite, furious and eloquent - is as good an expression of the energies of Scottish life and thought as any of our poets and novelists (see these reviews of recent books, A Floating Commonweatlh and Broonland). Shaped by his early seventies Open University heydays, and by his time as an academic in the engineers' republic of Baden-Wuttemsberg, Harvie is for Scottish independence, public transport, a mixed economy, an intellectual approach to craft and trade, and the best that is thought and said in any cultural moment. Long may his volcano smoulder. 

Map of Thoughtland: International Journal of Scottish Literature

 In recent years there have been many contentious debates in Scottish literary studies surrounding the nature and direction of the field. The aim of the International Journal of Scottish Literature is to provide an academic platform for the critical discussion and re-evaluation of the discipline. How have recent theoretical developments altered our conceptions of the nation, or of national literature? How has Scottish literature been perceived at an international level, and how do Scottish writers and critics engage with non-Scottish literary contexts? What can the discipline gain from establishing more comparative links? This journal exists in order to question these often-provocative critical matters. As an online journal, IJSL is a venue as well as a stimulus of such discussion.

via www.ijsl.stir.ac.uk

Scottish literature is a crucible for debates about national identity, progress, ambiguities, styles of life. The increasing study of it is producing a wave of younger Scottish intellectuals, who often become active in other areas like print news and broadcasting. The IJSL is an excellent showcase for this new wave. 

Map of Thoughtland: New Escapologist

New Escapologist is a magazine for white-collar functionaries with escape on the brain. We offer practical exit strategies from demeaning day jobs and celebrate the ‘flight’ bit of ‘fight or flight’.

via newescapologist.co.uk

Begs the question who the old escapologists were (we can safely assume: that situationist lot). Launched at the CCA in Glasgow in 2009, and co-founded by Glasgow-based designer Neil Scott (along with comedian Robert Wringham), the New Escapologist takes the lead set by Tom Hodgkinson's Idler empire and graces it with a new framework - not just retiring from the fray of the Weberian work ethic, but wriggling entertainingly and imaginatively out of it. Foppish, irresponsible, and very needed in this often too-dour wee pre-Republic. 

Map of Thoughtland: allmediascotland.com

Allmediascotland.com brings together people interested in media news - mainly people working in the industry, including hundreds of journalists - and organisations looking for a simple and cost-effective means of placing stories in front of the media.

via www.allmediascotland.com

Founded by the journalist and nationalist activist Alex Bell, but non-partisan in its coverage, All Media Scotland is one of the few places where frank, informed and contentious media commentary takes place in Scottish public life. Their external and internal opinion and blog sections are always worth checking out. 

Map of Thoughtland: The Drouth

The Drouth is:

Scotland's leading cultural quarterly. Publishing features and fiction, we are especially interested in literature, film and politics but also visual art, music, architecture, photography and comix. Our style and approach is eclectic but committed. There are few other magazines where Noam Chomsky might appear next to Robert Burns, or John Knox may be invited to guest edit an issue examining Fidel Castro and the current state of feminism.

via www.thedrouth.org

 

Can't really do better than their own self-description. A worthy successor to the Peter Kravitz-edited era of The Edinburgh Review of the 80's, with quite a few of the same characters writing, and with the same wilful combination of global radical theory with an immersion in the detail of Scottish society, culture and crises. They have a bammily-arranged alphabetical selection of articles from the printed magazine (again, the sad reality of wood-pulp-and-ink mouldering unsold in bookshops, rather than editorial quality whizzing round the Net in viral fashion, seems like a misuse of editorial subsidy to us) which shows its depth and reach. 

Map of Thoughtland: Reform Scotland

Reform Scotland is an independent, non-party think tank that aims to set out a better way to deliver increased economic prosperity and more effective public services based on the traditional Scottish principles of limited government, diversity and personal responsibility.

via www.reformscotland.com

Not quite in the same ideological spectrum as Thoughtland, but a respectable centre-right think-tank, producing a steady stream of papers, that takes fiscal autonomy and greater powers for Scottish self-government seriously - but generally as a means to a low-regulation, small-state, neo-liberal Scotland. Not a model that has a huge amount of credibility at the moment, post-Crash.

Map of Thoughtland: Democratic Green Socialist

Over the past 18 months Democratic Green Socialist online magazine has become one of the most widely read and original publications on the left. We have been consistent advocates of left unity in Scotland and internationally, and proponents of a new socialist vision for the 21st century. 

via www.democraticgreensocialist.org

A robust counter-cultural online publication, coming out of Aberdeenshire, notable chiefly for the towering talents of its contributor, John Aberdein, whose trilogy (first two novels Amande's Bed and Strip the Willow, a third on its way) has properly been described as the Scots Quair for Northern 21st century Scotland. John's ex-militant teacher's sensibility stamped all the way through this.

Map of Thoughtland: Cairns Craig @ The Centre for Modern Thought, Aberdeen

via www.abdn.ac.uk

Cairns Craig [a relation to Carol? We're not sure] is one of the constants of Scottish intellectual life over the last 20 years. As editor of the 'Determinations' series published by Polygon in the eighties and nineties, Craig helped to develop - shaped by contemporary critical theory - an autonomous history of Scottish thought, from Duns Scotus to Tom Nairn. His own work - exemplified by The Modern Scottish Novel, Out of History and most recently Intending Scotland - is the first place to stop if you want a rigorous and synoptic view of the internal coherence, and external impact, of Scottish ideas in the 20th/21st century. He is currently head of the Irish and Scottish Studies at Aberdeen University, and part of the excitingly titled Centre for Modern Thought. (Though we must mention Colin McArthur's resounding critique of Craig's work in Scottish Affairs. Available online? Of course not). 

Map of Thoughtland: Carol Craig @ Centre for Confidence and Well-being

via www.centreforconfidence.co.uk

The Centre for Confidence and Well-being is one of the fruits of the policy ferment in the early years of Scottish devolution. Funded initially by the Scottish Executive, the Centre picked up on the burgeoning literature in the early 00's on positive psychology and happiness studies, and tried to apply that to Scotland's well-below-par health indicators, both physical and mental (and of course their interrelation). Its founder and director Carol Craig has become one of the most penetrating critics of the collective psychological condition of Scottish life: her two books, The Scots Crisis of Confidence and this year's The Tears That Built the Clyde (both available here), are the kinds of multidisciplinary, reformist writing we need more of from the Scottish intelligentsia.

Map of Thoughtland: IFF Blog

This is the main blog of the International Futures Forum, a think-tank I was involved in from 2004-2006, and which hovers at a globalist height above much contemporary debate in Scottish politics and culture - and all the more valuable for that. Graham Leicester is its guiding light, gently creative and steadily visionary, in contact with intellectuals and activists who like to think about systemic problems from San Francisco to India.

Map of Thoughtland: Jim and Margaret Cuthbert

Yes it's as utilitarian a blog graphic as that: the Cuthberts are not in the ideas game for HTML 5 or the greater glory of Flash. But there is no more well-researched body of thinking about the viability of an independent Scotland, and the incompleteness of the devolved settlement, available to the general public, than these two ex-Scottish civil servants and their diligent procession of papers. I love their mirthless but lucid disclaimer at the bottom of the home page:

Our articles contain full references, and in many cases are published in refereed journals. We feel we can offer an independent perspective on the issues on which we comment, particularly since

: we are not members of any political party.

: we are not members of any institution, (and so are independent, for example, of academic grant constraints).

: we are not commissioned or funded to do the work reported here.

: nor are we committed to the current constitutional structure of the United Kingdom.

    We hope that our articles will be of interest to those, whether in Scotland or beyond, who have Scotland’s interests at heart.

Map of Thoughtland: Michael Gardiner

Micheal Gardiner is one of the younger generation of post-Tom-Nairn Scottish intellectuals in Scotland, as much influenced by dance culture and radical French theory as by historical or literary studies of post-Union Scotland. Micheal's reach is unusual: able to write lucid accounts of intellectual history (see From Trocchi to Trainspotting: Scottish Theory since the Sixties), as well as beautiful collections of fiction (see Escalator, based on his experiences in Japan while working as an academic), recently moving into historical biography with his account of Thomas Blake Glover, an influential Scot in Japanese 20th century history. Micheal is currently lecturing in English and Comparative Literary Studies at Warwick University. 

Map of Thoughtland: Lesley Riddoch

via www.lesleyriddoch.com

Lesley Riddoch first came to prominence as the founder of Harpies and Quines, was assistant editor of the Scotsman when it became (for one day) the Scotswoman, and is an energetic and entrepreneurial broadcaster and commentator, columnising for The Scotsman and producing debate shows for BBC Radio Scotland. She also founded the Africawoman newspaper. Lesley's political angle is difficult to define exactly, but she often takes a grass-roots, community-activist angle on the national debate, rooted in her land-ownership activism in Eigg and Rum.

Map of Thoughtland: Tom Nairn

Now in his late 70's, and as far as I can see, Scotland's most original political thinker of the 20th century shows no signs of slowing down. As Gerry Hassan said the other day, "I kind of think of people like myself from my generation – left and nationalist or post-nationalist – as ‘Tom’s children’ intellectually." Very true. Where I think Tom's great legacy lies is his battle, at the highest intellectual levels, to factor the experience and history of small-nation civic nationalism into the deep mechanics of global history - and to base this in a stunning multidisciplinary reach, across the natural and human sciences. Tom's place in the current infosphere of Thoughtland is a bit scattered, but you'll read his latest writings in the archives of Open Democracy (from them, a tribute on his 75th birthday), London Review of Books, New Left Review and New Statesman. Tom is currently a Lecturer in Globalisation at RMIT in Melbourne.

Map of Thoughtland: Joyce McMillan

 

via joycemcmillan.wordpress.com

Joyce McMillan has been writing for over two decades on Scottish culture and politics, primarily for the Scotsman, and is a remarkably consistent voice arguing for a pluralist, left-liberal Scotland - and not only arguing, but being hands-on, as part of the British government’s Consultative Steering Group on procedures for the new Scottish Parliament between 1998 and 1999. Ca's canny on the independence question, staying close to popular sovereignty as the ultimate decider (and fair enough), but a touchstone of the Scottish progressive consensus. 

Map of Thoughtland: Scottish Review Of Books

 
 
 via www.scottishreviewofbooks.org

The Scottish Review of Books is a long-overdue initiative - to bring out a Scottish version of the London Review of Books or the New York Review of Books - and it's not doing too badly. Has run extensive and detailed interviews with Scottish writers, historians and intellectuals, and provides to some degree (but not enough) a space for the long-form analytical essay, vacated by the long-lamented Radical Scotland (mentioned in passing in this review by George Kerevan... talking of which...)

Map of Thoughtland: 38minutes

 

via www.38minutes.co.uk

Started by the edu-tech guru Ewan Macintosh (himself something of a peak in the Thoughtland), and funded by Channel Four's new media organisation, 4iP, 38 Minutes has moved from being a mere bulletin board for digital hopefuls aiming to be funded, to a forum for debate about tech policy and culture in Scotland and beyond. The editor of Thoughtland got involved in a fantastic stramash about a poverty-porn documentary in its pages - but dig through and you'll find a very healthy practical and questioning techno-culture talking vigorously to itself. 

Map of Thoughtland: Edinburgh Review

 

via www.englit.ed.ac.uk

One of the glories of the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment, The Edinburgh Review was revived in the early 80's and captured the diverse intellectual and literary energy bubbling up in Scotland under Thatcher-era Scotland (Stuart Cosgrove, now a chief executive at Channel Four, once said to me that "for a time living in London, I couldn't live without it"). The current run is taking an explicitly internationalist viewpoint, mixed in with Scottish writers like Ewan Morrison and James Kelman. There is an archive of online articles, but it's frustrating that very little of its riches are available online. This is a bete noire of Thoughtland - a faulty choice of wood-pulp-and-ink obscurity over digital ubiquity and influence - to be explored anon. 

Map of Thoughtland: Iain Macwhirter

 

Iain MacWhirter is for many of us the best columnist writing in Scotland at the moment. Clearly at one point a rigorous Marxist, and having gone through his vale of tears as a columnist for the Observer and a BBC Political Correspondent, Iain is now liberated into commentary which displays both insider knowledge of the Scottish establishment, and a powerful (if occasionally despairing) progressive analysis. See his own blog for more pieces. He's also currently Rector of Edinburgh University. 

Map of Thoughtland: Joan McAlpine

 

via joanmcalpine.typepad.com

Other than being my ex-, Joan McAlpine is one of the best Scottish journalists and commentators writing at the moment - independence-supporting, left-leaning, but willing to take contrarian positions against the Scottish consensus. Until recently in senior editorial positions at The Herald and The Sunday Times, she is currently a columnist for The Scotsman. 

Map of Thoughtland: Gerry Hassan

 

via www.gerryhassan.com

Gerry Hassan is a kind of one-man think-tank in Scotland - an inveterate (and if George Galloway hadn't besmirched the world, an indefatigable) editor of essay compilations, organisers of conferences, compiler of reports - all rooted in a left progressive world-view, yet very much in contact with the metropolitan left like Compass and Open Democracy. 

Map of Thoughtland: Scottish Left Review

 

• John McAllion and Gordon Morgan on the SSP/Solidarity

• Vince Mills on Labour

• Kevin Williamson on the SNP

• Peter McColl on the Greens

• Gordon McKay on the trade unions

• Isobel Lindsay on civic Scotland

 

In addition the issue has articles from Carole Ewart on human rights and Henry McCubbin on Europe.

via www.scottishleftreview.org

Jimmy Reid (see earlier Thoughtland post) began the Scottish Left Review in 2000, a "bi-monthly magazine that seeks to provide a focal point for thought and discussion for the Scottish Left It is non-party but aims to provide a forum for those on the Left of all parties and none". Full of well-researched position papers, and sprinkled with wily tacticians, unrepentant utopians and committed internationalists, it does everything a "left review" should do. 

Map of Thoughtland: Scottish Review

 

via www.scottishreview.net

Scottish Review is run by Kenneth Roy, a venerable Scottish journalist who has used his wide network to help fund (through subscription and donation) the Institute for Contemporary Scotland, which backs this online publication. The SR does useful investigative work into the new Scottish establishment at Holyrood, and also runs informed commentary from the retired members of earlier, less devolved Scottish institutions. The general tone is like a McOldie, except vaguely left-nationalist, and quixotic about culture and history - very much a reflection of the editor's sensibility.

Map of Thoughtland: Bella Caledonia

One more place to visit for today in the Thoughtland - Bella Caledonia, edited by Kevin Wiliamson and Mike Small. Left-nationalist with a lot of green, and some serious back-up thinking - Small is a scholar of Patrick Geddes and was a student of the American anarchist Murray Bookchin, and Williamson was the publisher of the Rebel Inc. press (associated with Canongate Press), which published Irvine Welsh, Knut Hamson, Alexander Trocchi, among others.

Map of Thoughtland: Variant

 

...the free arts and culture magazine.
In-depth coverage in the context of broader social, political & cultural issues

via www.variant.org.uk

Beginning an on-the-run category highlighting some of the more interesting intellectual hubs in Scottish society. Variant has been going since the early 80's, representing the anarchist/left-libertarian end of Central Belt artists. Notable for many things - highly worked-out and referenced articles on cultural politics - but most notable for taking sponsorship sums from Scottish Arts Council (now Creative Scotland) and Glasgow City Council, and then vigorously biting their corporate arses with detailed anatomies of their collusion with big business, and other bureaucratic corruptions. A great spectacle, but also deeply valuable