The Unnoticed Roots in the Soil of Alba
An analysis of ethnic and civic aspects of Scottish nationalism
Masterthesis in Cultural Anthropology University of Amsterdam
Januari 2014 Name: Gosse Simon Vuijk
Studentnumber: 5882907 Supervisor: dr. A. Strating
Index
Index
1
Chapter one: A Nagging Feeling
2
Chapter two: A Civic Nation
9
Chapter three: It is a Fact
22
Chapter four: What is the Nation?
34
Chapter five: The Elusive Nations
43
Chapter six: The Unnoticed Roots
51
Bibliography
57
Register of interlocutors
61
1. A Nagging Feeling
For me the summer of 2012 was one full of politics. I worked at the party bureau of the Dutch social-liberal party D66 because of the General Elections in the Netherlands that would take place on the 12th of September that year. I was fully occupied by Dutch politics, but took one week off to
focus on Scottish politics. At the time, I was a member of the editorial staff of the student-run anthropological magazine Cul. Every summer the staff tried going abroad to report on important events going on in other countries. This year I had suggested to go to Scotland, because of the upcoming referendum. I don't remember how I found out there would be a referendum or why I was so interested in it, but it had somehow drawn my attention.
Because of my job with D66, I was not able to stay the full two weeks that the other editors had in Edinburgh. This had positive and negative consequences. The negative ones are obvious. I didn't partake in the whole trip, so my knowledge of Scottish independence was quite limited after the four days I spend in Edinburgh. The article I wrote, I could've written without visiting Scotland as well. In this sense I wasted my time. However, there were also two positive consequences. First of all, my short visit helped the other editors to get a fresh perspective on the situation. They had mostly heard that Scottish nationalism was civic nationalism, nationalism based on citizenship and institutions rather than ethnicity. They told me this when I arrived. Scholars had told them this, so it sounded pretty plausible. However, I was skeptical. I didn't challenge this classification at that time because they spend much more time on the subject already, but I did tell them that it didn't feel like that was the whole story.
This nagging feeling was the second good consequence. It led to the research on which this thesis is based. The nagging feeling that civic nationalism wasn't the whole story behind Scottish nationalism: what is the nation, if nationalism is civic? To use the words of Fionn MacColla that are carved in the pavements of Edinburgh, doesn't nationalism have any 'roots in the soil of Alba' (see image 1 below), i.e. doesn't it have any roots in an ethnic history. This is what motivated me to dive into the world of Scottish nationalism.
1.1 What does it mean?
The question, what is the nation?, also stems from theoretical interests. During my training as anthropologist, my main interest has always been language. Or, to be more specific, what language can tell about certain social situations and how language can help us to understand human behavior. I believe that when looking closer at what people say, it often turns out that people are not saying what they are saying. The main reason that human language works is because it is based on a lot of assumptions that are never made explicit. It is expected that everybody shares the same ideas about the meaning of words. As an anthropologist I've always been interested in unraveling these underlying assumptions in order to get some understanding of the socio-cultural environment in which this language is used. An example of an interpretation that is assumed to be shared, is the meaning of 'Scottish nation'. In day-to-day conversation the meaning of this concept is never explicated because, as one of my interlocutors put it, 'no one would deny that Scotland is a nation'. Everybody assumes that the a nation is a singular and clearly defined entity, just as Scotland. However, this is not the case, as will become clear in this thesis.
My theoretical interest has developed because I came across three theoretical ideas that helped me understanding social situations. The first of these was the notion of méconnaissance of Ohnuki-Tierney that she puts forward in her book Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms (2002). Méconnaissance means that people use the same concepts but mean other things by it (Ohnuki-Tierney 2002: 281). Because they use the same concepts, they seem to be talking about the same thing. However, because the meaning is different, they could be talking about different things as well. This means that words actually cover up differences between people, rather than communicating similarities (ibid.). Again, the concept of the Scottish nation is a good example of this process. It can have different meanings to different people, but because they use the same word (and the meaning is never explicated) it seems like they are talking about the same thing.
The second theoretical idea is the Lacanian notion of the `imaginary signified` (Stavrakakis 1999: 27), which is based on the dichotomy signifier/signified of Ferdinand de Saussure (Danesi 1999: 11), whose work influenced my ideas about language. The basic assumption of Lacanian theory is that people are always looking for a stable and whole identity, but they will never be able to find it (Stavrakakis 2004: 24). Language is one of the ways in which people try to find this identity, but language fails to provide it (ibid.: 24-5). One of the reasons for this failure is that words, according to Lacanian theory, never have meaning (Stavrakakis 1999: 27-8). Words only seem to get meaning because they are expressed in relation to different words. Meaning occurs in a chain of words which all refer to the others for meaning (Evans 1996: 188-9). However, people get
the impression that words have meaning because of the imaginary signified. This is the empty center of the chain in which all meaning seems to disappear (Stavrakakis 1999: 27), but because of so called points de capiton1 does this empty center seem to get meaning. Points de capiton are signifiers that seem to anchor the whole chain of meaning (ibid.: 60). These signifiers seem to load the other signifiers with more meaning, to specify them (ibid.: 61). In Lacanian theory, just as with
méconnaissance, meaning seems to obscure more than it explains.
In Lacanian theory, language is an imprecise, social, and external structure through which people try to find their highly specific, personal, and deeply internal identity (Stavrakakis 1999: 38). This is why I think that this, Lacanian theory coupled with méconnaissance, offers an interesting theoretical perspective on the nation. This perspective draws the attention to the tension between personal interpretation of identity and the general nature of the nation that offers an identity. This also is the main issue that Anthony Cohen addressed in his paper Personal Nationalism: A Scottish
View of Some Rites, Rights and Wrongs (1996). He wonders why people choose to identify their
particular self in terms of the grand generalization that is the nation? (Cohen 1996: 802) Cohen posed the same question as Lacan did, and his conclusion was that nationalism is personal. 'Anyone's Scotland can be substantially different from anyone else's' (ibid.: 805). So he also argued that the meaning of the Scottish nation was personal but that it was not experienced as being personal because it is a generalization. This is my third theoretical inspiration.
This theoretical framework is my theoretical motivation to conduct my research on Scottish nationalism. The three theories discussed are general theories on the relation between individuals and the semiotic world in which these individuals live. However my research is more specific. I wondered whether Scottish nationalism is civic or not. To answer this, the meaning of the Scottish nation needs to be clear and for that exercise this theoretical framework is not very helpful. This theoretical framework can help understanding why my interlocutors call their nationalism civic, but it can not help determining whether it is civic or not. For this more specific theories on nationalism are needed.
In order to look into the kind of nationalism Scottish nationalism is, a useful theoretical differentiation could be made between situational, constructionist and primordial approaches to nationalism (Brown 2000: 5). A situational approach to nationalism regards it as an ideology based on a rational considerations of interests (ibid.: 13-20). A good example of this is Michael Hechter's
1
Point de capiton could be translated into English as 'anchoring point'. Stavrakakis described it as upholstery buttons
in the language; they are points that force the surrounding fabric to form according to their position. Points de
capiton do the same with meaning. They force the surrounding signified to form themselves in relation to the
argument on internal colonialism (Hechter 1975). He argues that because of uneven distribution of wealth within a state, the interests of the peripheral groups and the core are diverging (ibid.: 30-4). In order for the peripheral groups to serve their best interests, they have to object against the power of the core (ibid.). This would explain the rise of Scottish nationalism, according to Hechter (ibid.: 339-40). A constructionist approach to nationalism regards it as an ideological or institutional framework through which the world can be experienced (ibid.: 20-29). Michael Billig's argument about banal nationalism is a good example of this, because he argues that 'nationalism is the ideology by which the world of nations has come to seem the natural world – as if there could not possibly be a world without nations' (Billig 1995: 37). The primordial approach to nationalism regards nationalism as a conceptual language through which people feel an 'innate' attachment to the 'natural nation' (Brown 2000: 6-13). According to Brown in this conceptual language 'the only authentic nationalism is ethnic nationalism' (ibid.: 6). Brown refers to Walker Connor as an example of a primordial theorist. In his essay 'A Nation is a Nation, is a State, is an Ethnic Group, is a...' Connor writes that 'what ultimately matters is not what is but what people believe is' (Connor 1994: 37). This illustrates that primordialism is about the experiences of people.
This tripod is interesting because my interlocutors often talked about the 'nature' of their nationalism. Angus, an active member of the SNP youth wing, said it most explicitly: 'In Scotland there has always been a very civic form of nationalism'. Doug, a retired schoolteacher and pro-independence activist, told me that 'it is quite different from ethnic nationalism'. The tripod could help understanding which view on nationalism they have. Doug, for example, is saying it is not ethnic nationalism. This would hardly be compatible with the conceptual language of primordialism, so apparently Doug is not looking through a primordial lens. The question then is through which lens he is looking. I will try to answer this question in this thesis.
At the same time, the tripod is a relevant framework for an analysis of Scottish nationalism. Regarding nationalism to be civic, as proposed in the second chapter of this thesis, is a situationalist view on nationalism, because all the 'civic' arguments were about how independence would serve the interests of the people of Scotland. But regarding Scotland as 'a fact', is a constructionist argument, while talking about Scotland being a 'banal believe' (§ 3.1) is more a primordialist argument because of its emphasis on believing. So, in my thesis I will look at Scottish nationalism from all three perspectives. This way I hope to address all relevant aspects of my interlocutor's nationalism.
1.2 18th of September 2014
researching other nationalisms, but I chose Scotland. I had two main reasons for this decision. The first reason is practical. Because my research would focus on language, I needed to speak the language of my interlocutors fairly good. I'm a Dutch native speaker, with some understanding of Frisian, but the only other language I speak is English. So this limited my choice to the Dutch and/or English speaking areas in the world.
The second reason was more important. The English language area is quite extensive, so I still had a lot of option. I could've gone to America, land of nationalism and patriotism. I could've gone to Ireland or Northern-Ireland because of the still recent history of violence in the name of freedom. However I chose Scotland because of the referendum that will take place next year. On the 18th of September 2014, the people of Scotland get to vote in a referendum. They get to vote on the
question: Should Scotland be an independent country? This was the reason for the editorial staff of
Cul to visit Scotland. During the summer of 2012 the Yes Scotland-campaign (or the Yes-campaign),
the pro-independence campaign, was launched and it will keep going till the 18th of September.
During the Cul-trip we covered the start of the campaign and during my research the half-way point passed.
This referendum is the outcome of a long period of social and political change in Scotland. In his book Hechter felt that he had to go back to the sixteenth century to describe this process accurately. The exhibition 'A Changing Nation: Scotland 1900 – present' in the National Museum of Scotland, the reference to the Scottish independence movement starts in the 1930's with the founding of the Scottish National Party (SNP). In the STV (Scotland TV) program Road to
Referendum, which was broadcasted during my fieldwork, the story started after the Second World
War. I would say the process started in the 1296 with the start of the First War of Scottish Independence. I wouldn't argue that there is a direct line between the Scottish independence fighters, like William Wallace, of that war and my interlocutors, but this historic event still plays an important part in story that my interlocutors told me. Just as the Union of Parliaments that happened in 1707, when the Scottish parliament got dismissed and Scotland was assigned seats in the Parliament of Westminster. After that the founding of the SNP in 1934 is the most significant historical event, especially because it was a political party driven by artists which is also the case for the current independence movement in which artists play an important role, for example National Collective (see §2.5). Then, in 1967, the SNP gets its first seat in Westminster. Winnie Ewing secures a supposedly safe Labour seat. The rise of the SNP leads to a referendum in 1979, in which the people of Scotland are asked if they want a parliament in Scotland. A majority voted in favor of the parliament, but because the turnout was too low (and thus the votes in favor did not amount to 40% of the registered votes) the referendum was invalid. The same year Margaret
Thatcher came into office and put Scotland through a difficult decade, thereby alienating almost all Scottish voters from the Conservative Party. From that time on, Scotland voted mostly Labour or Lib-Dems.
During the 1990's Labour regained power, but disappointed the people of Scotland with how little change they brought. In order to regain Scotlands vote, Labour promised a referendum on devolution, i.e. a Scottish parliament. In 1997 this referendum took place and Scotland voted in favor (74,3 %), so in 1998 the Scottish Parliament was re-instated after being absent for almost 300 years. From this point forward, because of the neoliberal nature of Blair's Labour, the SNP was gaining more and more support. This accumulated in winning an absolute majority in Scottish Parliament in the 2011 elections. However, this victory was not a victory based on a wish for independence of the Scottish electorate. Since the 1970's the SNP turned into a social-democratic party, a reasonable alternative to the disappointing Labour Party. Although independence is the most important goal of the SNP and the SNP got a majority of the votes in Scotland, at that time at best one in three of the people in Scotland supported independence. At the time of my research the polls show that between 30 and 35 percent of the people support independence, while around 40 percent opposes it. In short, Scottish nationalism has a pretty good base of support, but is not really dominating Scotland. The 18th of September 2014 is going to be a very exciting day with probably a
close call regarding the outcome of the referendum.
1.3 Particular place and people
Even though this whole social and political development is an important part of understanding Scottish nationalism, it was not the focus of my research. My theoretical questions are not questions on social change. They are not questions about understanding a specific situation from a historical perspective. My questions are about understanding a general process that is very much bound to a particular place, in a particular time with particular people. Different from Hechter, I will not try to explain Scottish nationalism, or why people want to become independent or not. My research was on how all these people seemed to talk about the same thing, while there were differences between them. About how a nation could be civic. It is not about social change, but about a specific social situation.
This is also reflected in this thesis. Throughout this thesis, a lot of attention is paid to individual expressions to determine the nature of the Scottish nation as I encountered it among my interlocutors. The most prominent question about the nature of this nation is whether it is civic or not. The civic aspect of Scottish nationalism is addressed in the second chapter of this thesis. It will be demonstrated that a lot of the arguments in favor of Scottish independence actually are civic. The
third chapter will show how Scotland is a reality in which my interlocutors live. Billig's notion of
banal nationalism is useful for understanding how a nation can be a reality, and this notion will
therefore play an important role in this chapter. Scotland as a reality is an aspect of the argument in favor of independence which gets explicated in the fourth chapter of this thesis. The reality called Scotland is based on its history and this history is less civic than the independent future that is argued for. This means that Scottish independence might not be as civic as claimed by my interlocutors. In this chapter the role of ethnicity in the nationalists argument, and how it is related to the civic aspect of the argument, will be discussed. The fifth chapter will address how these two different aspect of the nationalist discourse, and more importantly the discrepancy between them, can go unnoticed by my interlocutors, who claim Scottish nationalism has nothing to do with ethnicity.
Chapter two: A Civic Nation
When I visited Scotland for the first time, I talked to dr. Nicola McEwen, a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Edinburgh. I asked her what she thought of the classification of the SNP as a civic nationalist party. She said: '… you might classify the SNP, in your binary definition, as more civic nationalist than ethnic. Although, again it is a very binary definition, every nationalism has parts of both'. I encountered this binary definition among my interlocutors during my research. A couple of them defined Scottish nationalism, either explicitly or implicitly, as being civic and as not at all ethnic. In this chapter I will show that by civic they mean that it is a rational nationalism and not a nationalism based on something 'irrational' like ethnicity. According to some of my interlocutors, independence is just the only way to serve the interest of the people of Scotland. Through this stance, my interlocutors demonstrated a quite situationalist look on nationalism. In this chapter I will also regard their arguments from a situationalist perspective, showing how their arguments are rational. To some extend at least.
The differentiation between civic and ethnic aspects of nationalism has been made for a long time and dates back to the work of Hans Kohn in the 1940's (Lægaard 2007: 41). Another example is Clifford Geertz's argument on the tension between the civic and primordial motives for communal unity as driving force behind the evolution of new states (Geertz 1994: 30). Geertz also argued that even though these motives are closely related, they are different, and that s the concept of the nation is useless for analytical purposes if this is denied. The term civic nationalism is also used by Michael Ignatieff in his book Blood and Belonging (1993). In this book he argues that there are two sorts of nationalism; ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism. He makes a rigid separation between these kinds of nationalism, which has been problematized by several scholars. For example, Billig argued that Ignatieff used this dichotomy to distance himself and his world from the ethnic violence that sometimes results from ethnic nationalism and ethnic nation building (Billig 1995: 46-9). Ignatieff claims to be a cosmopolitan, in the sense that he is not bound to one nation state, and thus civic nationalist, because he only supports the function (safety and security) of nations (Ignatieff 1993: 9). In this way he distances himself from any form of nation building (Billig 1995: 47-8). This is too simple a use of the dichotomy because '… there are no, and have never been any, cases of a purely political nation' (Lægaard 2007: 43). In other words, ethnic and civic nationalism are two sides of the same coin, or in Geertz's words they are different but related. In this thesis I will argue the same. I will argue that nationalism will always have an ethnic component.2
2 As Lægaard argues, this position is as much an expression of a certain take on what a nation is, as it is a theoretical
So why still use Ignatieff's definition of civic and ethnic nationalism? The answer lies in the root of my curiosity towards Scottish nationalism, namely that the nationalists themselves call deem their nationalism to be civic and absolutely not ethnic. So they make the same rigid distinction as Ignatieff does. To make a accurate analysis of the situation I believe I should take my interlocutors serious and that's why I want to start my analysis by assuming they are right. After that, guided by my own skepticism, I will address the problematic aspects of my interlocutor's view. A rigid division is useful for my analysis but my conclusions will be more nuanced.
So let us turn to Ignatieff's definitions of civic and ethnic nationalism. In their article 'Between Freedom and Belonging: Ignatieff and Berlin on Nationalism' (2009), Donald Ipperciel and Jennifer Woo gave a great summary of this dichotomy:
'Ethnic nationalism claims that an “individual’s deepest attachments are inherited, not chosen” in that national identity is based on common ancestry, language, religion, customs and rituals (Ignatieff 1993a: 7–8; 2000a: 128). In ethnic nations, only a portion of the population may be regarded as nationals and accordingly, many individuals living in the state may not enjoy all the rights of citizenship. In contrast, civic nationalism maintains that “the nation should be composed of all those – regardless of race, color, creed, gender, language, or ethnicity – who subscribe to the nation’s political creed” (1993a: 6). According to this form of nationalism, the nation is conceived of as a community of equal, rights-bearing citizens adhering to common liberal and democratic political values. Hence, nationalism as such is not inherently bad: “there is nothing intrinsically fanatical or extreme about nationalism, if we define it as a principled love of country” (2000a: 124).' (Ipperciel & Woo 2009: 159-60)
Therefore the focus of civic nationalism is on '… the nation's political creed', or e.g. 'a shared set of political practices and values' (Ignatieff 1993: 3-4). This is very much what (most of) my interlocutors and the Yes-campaign tried to show that Scottish nationalism is about. In this chapter I will analyze the arguments in favor of independence that I encountered and show how these are examples of civic nationalism and I will start with analyzing one of the core arguments of the Yes-campaign.
Image 2
2.1 Who can decide best?
In presenting their case, the Scottish independence movement has one fundamental assumption. This assumption is perfectly put into words on the inside of a flyer of the Yes-campaign: 'But one thing is beyond question: that the people best placed to make decisions about Scotland are the people who care most about Scotland – the people who live here' (see image 2, next page). This was also told to me in a different way by Gary, a young employee of an independent MSP who was member of the SNP until the summer of 2013, when I met him in Holyrood for the first time: 'To me it is clear that the people who have the biggest stake in this country should decide about its future and those are the people who live here. Their homes, their jobs, their schools, these are all in Scotland and that's what they've got to lose'. It is also repeated on the Yes Declaration. When was launched, this declaration was also presented and Yes set themselves a goal: before the referendum they want to have one million autographs of people who support the Declaration and thus Scottish independence. By the time I left, a little over a year after the launch of Yes and before the referendum, there was a rumor that at least 600.000 people had signed the Declaration already. Even if this is too optimistic, it is clear that a large number of people have signed the Declaration and thus agreeing with its content. The first paragraph of the Declaration is as follows:
'I believe that it is fundamentally better for us all if decisions about Scotland's future are taken by the people who care most about Scotland, that is, by the people of Scotland. Being independent means Scotland's future will be in Scotland's hands.'3
'The people who live here', 'the people who have the biggest stake in this country' and 'the people of Scotland'. These three definitions of who should be in charge of Scotland, are examples of Scottish civic nationalism. They define the people by where they live and not by their ethnic background. This definition is the basis for a lot of arguments of the Yes-campaign in favor of independence.
One of those arguments is that there is a democratic deficit in the UK, which means that Scotland is not heard4. This argument runs as follows: In the last 30 years Scotland voted
systematically more left than the governments of the UK turned out to be. Since the start of the Thatcher-era, Scotland never voted for the Tories, but half of the governments since then were formed by the Tories. So Scotland is not getting the government that it votes for. Also did the Scottish vote almost never matter for the outcome of elections. In the last 60 years, only five times the vote in the UK as a whole was so close that a different Scottish vote would have changed the outcome of the elections. Conclusion: there is a democratic deficit.
This democratic deficit only makes sense, if it is assumed that the people who live in Scotland vote differently because they have different wishes, which should come from the fact that they see that their society has different needs. Yes-activist Robbie told me that independence is also about no longer being able to blame other people for the problems in Scotland. He told me that he feels that Westminster is blamed too easily for the problems of Scotland and that independence would mean that Scotland had to do it on its own, which means that they have the freedom to act on their own behalf and address their specific problems. If they would fail, at least it would be their own fault, he said. In my interview with Doug he said that '[t]here is nothing better than taking control over your own affairs'. This argument is in line with the statement that the people who live in Scotland would be best suited to decide about Scotland's future. This future would be in line with the national political creed to which all people of the nation should adhere, according to civic nationalists at least.
2.2 Scottish institutions and political beliefs
The national political creed, to which all people of the nation should adhere, in the right context, is
3 http://www.yesscotland.net/join-in/sign-the-declaration (11-12-2013)
4 An example of the 'democratic deficit'-argument (although in a slightly different form) can be found on the SNP
part of another civic nationalist argument as well. The argument is that Scottish institutions have always differed from the institutions of the rUK5. According to my interlocutors, there are ample
examples of Scottish institutions that have been significantly different from the rUK institutions since the re-installment of the Scottish Parliament. For example, my interlocutors told me6, the
National Health Service (NHS) Scotland has been significantly different since devolution. In Scotland all prescription drugs are free. All treatments in the hospitals are free. In the rUK some prescriptions are paid for by health insurances and others have to be paid by people themselves. The same goes for hospital visits. Westminster is now reforming the NHS and wants people to pay more for their healthcare. The possible loss of the universal healthcare of NHS is often used as an argument for Scottish independence. For example in an article on the pro-independence website 'Wings Over Scotland', titled 'Why only independence can save our NHS'7.
Another example of a Scottish institution that could be seen as an illustration of the difference between Scotland and the rUK is the Scottish judicial system. This remained independent of the British judicial system between the Union of Parliaments and the re-installment of Holyrood. Holyrood is one of the institutions that most of my interlocutors referred to when I asked why Scotland was different from the other countries in the UK. They told me that there are certain Scottish laws that have always been in effect in Scotland but not in other parts of the UK. For example the laws surrounding the burden of proof in Scotland are different. Sarah, a lawyer and the girlfriend of one of my interlocutors called Fraser, explained to me that in Scotland one witness is not enough to convict someone. At least one other witness or other form of evidence is needed. This is called corroboration and doesn't exist in the rUK.8
These kinds of differences are felt to be an expression of the different moral values that are dominating in Scotland compared to the rUK; more respect for the human rights (judicial system) and a belief in the governments ability to deliver social justice. These different moral values are the foundations on which the 'political creed' of Scotland is based. The argument about the democratic deficit, and especially the point that Scotland votes more leftist9 than the UK as a whole does, and
the argument about the difference between Scottish institutions and the rUK institutions, are related because they express the dominant moral values in Scotland. These values are supposedly
5 rUK is a abbreviation often used in the independence discussion to refer to Wales, England and Northern Ireland as
a single entity. So to refer to the entity from which Scotland would separate.
6 And this view is supported by the media:
http://www.scotsman.com/news/health/nhs-in-scotland-safe-from-privatisation-snp-1-3040761 (09-10-2013)
7 http://wingsoverscotland.com/why-only-independence-can-save-our-nhs/ (28-11-2013) 8 Sarah and Iain told me that the Scottish government wants to get rid of this law.
9 By this my interlocutors mean that Labour, the Greens, the Socialists and the SNP (as a social-democratic party)
have had more support in Scotland than these parties had in the rUK., and that the Tories never had a majority in Scotland since the Thatcher-era.
expressed through the way the people in Scotland vote and through the way in which people in Scotland organized their institutions.
2.3 Borders
Another example of the civic character of Scottish nationalism is the way my interlocutors talked about the borders of Scotland. When one of them presented the 'democratic deficit' argument, I often pointed out to them that this only made sense if you already accepted the border between Scotland and England. After that I asked them why this border should be the way it was. Most of my interlocutors answered that it didn't have to be, but that it was practical to actually keep it the way it was. For example, Erik, one of the press officers of the SNP in Holyrood, told me that Scotland already is a real political entity. The political structure is already there, since the re-installment of Holyrood. That's why the border of an independent Scotland should be where it is officially now.
Angus gave me another argument. He argued that right now it is clear to everybody where the border is and everybody acknowledges the border right now. Proposing another border would make the call for independence unnecessarily complicated. Iain, an employee of two SNP MSP's in Holyrood and big fan of football with whom I played a couple of matches, also talked about this in my interview with him. He said: 'I don't care about nationality and stuff, but you need to be pragmatic'. By this he meant that he didn't mind who was Scottish and who was English when it comes to determining the border, but that the current border would be a pragmatic solution. David, an RIC10-activist, told me that he has family in Manchester and that he feels kind of sad leaving
them behind in the UK. He would gladly take them in, when Scotland would be independent, but he didn't think it was feasible that the English would comply. Mairi, with whom I lived for four weeks and who is a passionate Yes-activist, told me she would be happy for Newcastle to join. She wouldn't care moving the borders more down south, but she, just as David, didn't think this was a realistic possibility because the English would never allow that.
But at times Mairi would joke about moving the borders. The first time she did that was when she and Simon, her boyfriend who also supports independence and owns the apartment in which I lived with them, took me to a meeting they called 'Pints for Independence'. This was a informal meeting at a pub in Leith. The idea behind the meeting was that a lot of people feel a little reluctant to ask the questions about independence in campaign settings because they don't want to
be judged or get too involved. So this meeting was supposed to be a safe, non-campaign space in which people only entered on invitation of friends, in which the step to ask questions and discuss your own point of view is made as easy as possible. While enjoying a pint, you can debate whatever you want regarding independence; no matter your stance, pro or con.
The tone of the meeting was set by the opening of Steven, the unofficial discussion leader and an employee of the National Museum of Scotland. He had a couple of copies of a paper11 by the
Jimmy Reid Foundation (a socialist think tank) on their idea that they call 'The Common Weal'. This is a socialist 'model for economic and social development in Scotland'. So the conversation immediately started off as being a conversation about political visions on society. A socialist vision (which potentially could be realized in an independent Scotland, according to the Reid Foundation) and a neoliberal vision (as all my interlocutors see the current policies of Westminster). For most of my interlocutors this ideological divide seemed to exist between Scotland and rUK, i.e. Holyrood and Westminster. When I asked whether the north of England should then also join an independent Scotland, since it votes more leftist than the south-east as well, Mairi answered: 'I would be happy to get independence just from London. We can just take some parts. Yeah! Lets redraw the borders!' Everybody laughed, so it was clear that this was just a joke. Steven added that there were a couple of rich city's/suburbs surrounding London that they could do without. This remark was met with more laughter.
This is an illustration of how Mairi and Steven perceived the borders as they are now. They don't really care where the borders are. The same way Iain said he didn't care about nationality, they didn't seem to think the borders should define people, the 'political creed' of the people should. This is also expressed in a joke I made with Mairi a couple of times12. We talked about that there are
people in England that support the political ideals of the Scottish independence movement, and that there are people in Scotland who support the current policies of the UK. Mairi told me that she would gladly have the people who agree with her coming to Scotland. As a joke, I then suggested that maybe there should be a solution for Scotland/England comparable to the 'solution' of Pakistan/India. Maybe all the people in the UK should be given a choice in which country they want to live, a socialist Scotland or a neoliberal UK. Jokingly Mairi said this was a great idea. This is another example of how important the political creed is more important to Mairi than ethnicity, of how her nationalism is civic.
11 http://reidfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/The-Common-Weal.pdf (12-10-2013)
12 I would initiate these jokes, but because they were based on what Mairi said at 'Pints for independence' I think they
2.4 Radical Independence Campaign
The strongest expression of the importance of the political creed in the Scottish independence movement is to be found in the group called the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC). The first time I heard of this group was on the third day of my fieldwork. I had just visited Cameron, a shopmanager of a kilt- and souvenirsshop, in his shop for the first time, and I was wandering down the Royal Mile in the direction of Holyrood, when I saw a couple of people standing outside an pub and one of them was holding a sign. The sign said: 'We don't want racism, sexism and fascism!'. This sign sparked my interest so I went over to the woman who was holding the sign and asked her what the sign was for and why they were here. She told me that Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party (Ukip), was in the pub having a press conference. She asked if I knew what Ukip was and I told her that I knew that it is a Euro-skeptic party that is not all that fond of immigrants.
At that moment a lot of noise came from inside the pub and people started to come out. As I found out later, the landlord was not informed by Ukip about the press conference and when the protesters (of whom the most went inside before I arrived) started to interrupt the press conference, he had had enough and kicked everybody out. The first protesters who came outside quickly unrolled a banner that made me really happy, because it connected the protest to Scottish independence. This was my stroke of luck that all anthropologists need. The banner was about eight meters long and said: 'Vote Yes for Scotland'. For me the relation between independence and protesting against Ukip was not clear, so I started to ask the people who held the banner and other signs about it. One guy, an older man who wore a kilt, told me that both independence and being anti-Ukip (i.e. pro-immigration, pro-gender equality and anti-fascism) were all leftist 'issues'. For him this was the relation, and it was enhanced by the fact that independence could 'keep Ukip out of Scotland'. In other words, he saw independence as a safe haven for his political creed.
After a couple of minutes Nigel Farage also came out and people started chanting: 'scum, scum, scum, scum!'. This made it really clear to me how hostile this protest was. After a while, when also the police came outside, the lyrics changed into 'Get this scum of our streets!'. This was a really interesting sentence because with this the protesters claimed a territory and a moral highground. They called Farage 'scum' because of his political creed, which appalled the protesters. The protesters expressed this negative stance towards Ukip policies in another chant: 'Unemployment and inflation, are not caused by immigration, stop it, get off it, the enemy is profit'. But through the sentence (Get this scum of our streets) the protesters did not only protest against his political creed, they protested against him bringing this creed to Scotland. 'Our streets' in this case
meant Scotland. I only understood this after I talked to the older man again. He explained that they didn't want Ukip in Scotland because there was no support for this party in Scotland and because they supposedly brought a negative and hateful message to Scotland which didn't fit Scottish political culture.
During the protest there was a second banner. Three young people were walking around with a banner saying 'Radical Independence Campaign, a different Scotland is possible!'. When Farage was finally escorted away in a riot van of the police, I went to talk to them. Only one really seemed interested in talking to me. This was when I actually met David for the first time and he told me that RIC is an initiative to campaign in favor of a specific independent Scotland. A Scotland built on socialist values and ideas. Thats also when he introduced me to Liam, one of the leaders of the protest, and I asked both of them if we could meet up later to talk about the protest. It took quite some effort to meet Liam again (he was quite a busy activist), but when we met again he expressed that he shared the old man's view on Ukip13.
David I met two weeks later in a pub for an interview and the first question I asked all the people I interviewed was why they support independence. David gave the following answer:
D: I'm a strange one right because [two seconds of silence] because I'm not a fan of the SNP at all [G: no] and eh I spend quite some time campaigning against them. Ehm it's really since ehm independence is a viable option [unintelligible] looking at it, I think the most compelling argument for it is the fact that especially since like 2008, 2007 2008 [G: uhm] like the financial crisis kicking off [G: ja] You see why the UK is very much on the forefront of, politics have been really... very very neoliberal [G: ja] things are like, you have this situation that is controlled by a fairly small group of very rich people [G: uhm] and the burden is put on on the poorest section of society [G: yeah] and I think that is inher.. that is something that is inherently wrong with British politics [G: ja] it doesn't just limit to these aspects of it [G: ja] it's in foreign politics as well. [G: ja] It's eh a kind of, there is still a certain amount of ehm lingering empire-like [G: ja] atmosphere in foreign [G: ja] policy and a chance for Scotland to break away from that thinking, it is as a country set itself up with eh with a different political agenda [G: ja] A very [unintelligible, probably 'just'] informed [G: ja] political agenda [unintelligible] not just like for the population within Scotland but also across the European continent, around Europe [G: Uhm] You would have a country, a new country that's saying no we aren't, we are not going to have nuclear weapons [G: yes] we are not going to support any new defense stuff and aspects of world politics that we don't like [G: ja] It could, it could, there is eh there is always a chance that you get independence and then, it means not much of a change [G: ja] so there is a [unintelligible, probably 'need'] for people to make sure that independence comes hand-in-hand with political change [G: ja] I think that would happen if it gets voted free [G: ja].
This is a good example of how support for independence comes from political ideals rather than a wish to have a free country. Not once does David even hint that he believes that Scotland, as a nation, has a right to self-determination or anything like that. He even says that he only supports independence since it has become 'a viable option'. Only when he saw it as a real opportunity for change (to move from a neoliberal country to a socialist country) he started supporting
13 In this clip Liam expresses his views on Ukip, consistent with what the old man told me:
independence. His main focus is on change not on independence. Later on in the same interview he also said that he thinks independence is a chance to change the status quo. '… it it is an opportunity to to break from a status quo and it can be difficult to push through from a more left wing on the nationalscale...'. He illustrates here how independence is sometimes viewed as a way out for left wing people in the UK; how independence is a means to an end.
2.5 The 'Wish Tree'-project
Another example that shows that opposition against the current political culture of the UK and a belief in a different political persuasion, are two strong motivations for people to support independence, is the 'Wish Tree'-project (see image 3 below) initiated by National Collective, a platform that tries to bring artists together to make a case for Scottish independence expressed through the arts. The 'Wish Tree'-project is a really simple idea. The Yes-campaign has street stalls all over Scotland. Sometimes at events, sometimes just in the streets. The idea was that there would be little cards present at the stalls on which people could write 'what they wanted to see in an independent Scotland'14. After they had written down their wish, the people should then hang their
cards on a couple of strings that were supposed to be hanging at the stall. This way all the wishes were collected as the leaves of a tree. Andrew, an active member of the SNP youth wing and co-founder of National Collective, was quite a fan of this project and he planned to collect all the wishes from all over Scotland to present them in a creative way right before the referendum.
14 http://nationalcollective.com/2013/06/03/project-wish-tree/ (13-10-2013)
After the festival Andrew took all the wishes home with him and a few weeks later we went through them together. I took pictures of all the cards and we read the funny, inspirational or weird ones to each other. A couple of them were really good illustrations of the political wishes that people hope to be realized in an independent Scotland. I took pictures of 141 notes and only 16 did not have any specific political message. By specific political message I mean a message in which ideals are expressed, like fairness, equality or pacifism. There were a couple of these issues that returned quite a lot. A few examples (images 4-8):
Image 4
Image 5
Image 7 Image 8
These are all clear expressions of how people hoped Scotland would change its political creed when it would become independent. The fact that such a big part of the notes contained civic nationalist wishes, i.e. specific political messages, illustrates how much Scottish nationalism has important civic components.
2.6 I'm not a nationalist
A lot of people to whom I spoke, would not classify themselves as nationalists. Especially people who are part of RIC would often say that they are not nationalists but internationalists. Iain told me that he sometimes had trouble to negotiate his socialist and nationalist philosophical convictions, because socialism is about global working class solidarity. When I interviewed Colin, a SNP-member and Yes-activist from Edinburgh East, called himself a nationalist and immediately corrected himself. He said he was a patriot, because he didn't think that Scots are any better than other people. However, during the interview he referred to himself as a nationalist. This illustrates the complex relation my interlocutors have with being called a nationalist. The complexity of this
relation stems from the civic aspects of Scottish nationalism, because it is caused by the political creed of the nationalists, socialism. The complexity of this relation also indicates that there is more going on then just civic nationalism. Why else shouldn't the term 'nationalist' just be dropped all together? Why hang on to a civic nation when a nation will always have an ethnic undertone? Because this ethnic undertone is more important than my interlocutors realize.
2.7 A tension
In this chapter it has become clear that my interlocutors say they are civic nationalists and that their nationalism indeed has important civic aspects. All the examples in this chapter show that most of the wishes of the Scottish nationalists are civic claims. These are wishes about the political creed that Scotland should have. From a situationalist perspective, as Hechter also demonstrated, their arguments are just civic arguments based on facts. However, as the last example indicates, there is a tension between civic and ethnic nationalism in Scotland. The remaining part of this thesis analyzes this tension. However, because the situationalist perspective cannot explain the existence of ethnic groups, I will turn to another perspective in the next chapter. I will question one of the most important facts in the arguments of my interlocutors, namely the Scottish nation. From a constructionist perspective, I will demonstrate why the Scottish nation is regarded as a fact. This will also provide the basis for understanding why this fact doesn't fit in a situationalist, civic discourse.
Chapter three: It is a Fact
Scotland is a fact, at least for my interlocutors. My interlocutors told me all about the nature, the cities and the people of Scotland. There was no doubt in their minds that Scotland is here. They live
in Scotland, they grew up in Scotland. Of course, it is there! Scotland is a place you can walk
around in! In Scotland there are Munros, glens and lochs! As Mairi showed, when she was giving a lecture on the relation between Scottish culture and the Scottish nature, in prehistoric times, before platonic movement lead to the current configuration of the landmasses in the world, Scotland was actually separated from England and Wales. That little piece of land that moved from the equator through the tropes to its current location is real! Scotland is a fact.
Scotland as fact is the most fundamental assumption of the Yes-campaign. One of their flyers had the title 'Where is Scotland on Westminsters radar?'. This works on the assumption that Scotland is something to be seen. Being able to observe something means that something is a fact, at least that is an almost as omnipresent ideology in our world today as nationalism is. Another slogan was 'Scotland's future in Scotland's hands'. This depicts Scotland as something having a future and 'hands'. Surely then Scotland must exist.
Regarding Scotland as a fact does not fit in the situationalist world view that my interlocutors expressed most often. It doesn't fit, because it is not a rational argument. Yes, there are Munros, glens and lochs. However, when the piece of land is called the United Kingdom, all this nature would still exist. Scotland can only be understood as 'a fact' when a constructionist approach is taken. If the existence of Scotland is regarded as an ideological experience. In this chapter, I will, using Billig's notion of banal nationalism, demonstrate how Scotland can be experienced as a fact. I will argue that this experience is important to understand when trying to make sense of the role the nation plays in Scottish nationalism, because Scottish civic nationalism is at least partly based on the assumption that Scotland is an existing entity. It is essential to the role the nation plays in Scottish nationalism.
3.1 A banal believe
'No no no! It's not nationalist, it is socialist!' Dolina, a Scottish actress and co-writer of the Cheviot, was quite strong in her rejection of my classification of the Cheviot as a nationalist play. The
Cheviot, the stag and the black black oil is a Scottish play from the early seventies. The title refers
to three symbols of the exploitation of the Scottish people by 'capitalism' or 'capitalists'. 'Cheviot' is a reference to the sheep that replaced the Scots in the Highlands during the 18th and 19th century
Clearances. According to capitalists calculations the sheep would produce more on the same land than people ever would, so the land owners decided to expel people from their homes and fill their lands with sheep. This is how the Highlands became absolutely deserted, without any people living
there. This meant that the Highlands were the perfect place for the landowners to have huge estates as holiday homes, where they could organize hunting parties. But to hunt you need a prey, so that is where the 'stag' comes in. During the 19th century stags were brought to the Highlands so that the
landowners could hunt them down. Again the capitalists were enjoying the land from which they expelled the poor Scots. Finally in the 1970's, after oil was discovered in the Scottish parts of the North Sea, big American companies moved in to extract the oil. They made huge profits but mistreated their Scottish employees by paying them low wages and letting them work in unsafe and hard working conditions.
At least this is the story that the play tells. Dolina actually was one of the writers and performers of the play, and she told me that they based the play on historical research (even though they only took a couple of days to do research). Dolina ensured me that this is how it all really happened. This is interesting because it gives an insight in how she sees history. Through which lens she looks at history. Especially because of her strong reaction to my classification of the
Cheviot as nationalist. She missed why I classified the Cheviot as nationalist, namely because
national background of the capitalists and the exploited people matter in the play. There is one scene in the play that seemed to be really important to Dolina, because both times I watched the recording (on dvd) of the play with her (in two different groups), she was pointing out this scene to the other people that were watching. In this scene the Scottish working class people refused to join the British army even when their landlord was telling them it was their duty and that he would pay them if they would sign up. She expressed that she was so happy that the Scots didn't want to fight for 'them'. So in this scene the nationality of the working people was of utmost importance. Also enact the performers in the play a couple different accents to point out that the elites, in most cases, were either English or American. The Cheviot is a story about the Scottish people resisting the elite.
That is why the play is nationalistic, but Doli didn't see it this way and that is an indication of how fundamental her believe in Scotland is. Scotland is the obvious space in which the class struggle takes place and it is not doubted that it is relevant if there are foreign influences. This is an example of the omnipresence of 'Scotland' as idea. This is a fundamental circumstance without which the whole pro-independence discourse would collapse.
3.2 The right to self-determination
Most of the rational arguments made for independence are based on the existence of a Scottish nation separate from other nations. There are two quite obvious examples of arguments in favor of independence in which this is explicit. First is the democratic argument, which I already discussed in the previous chapter. This argument is based on a separation between Scotland and the rUK. You only make the distinction between the rUK vote and the Scottish vote if you assume that it is
relevant to make this distinction and you feel that these are two separate entities. This means that this argument is not only an argument in favor of a Scottish right to self-determination, it is based on the assumption that Scotland has a right to self-determination. First when my interlocutors argue that 'Scotland votes more left than the rUK', this assumed separation is apparent. Secondly the same happens when they argue that 'the Scottish vote hardly ever matters'. Here it is assumed that it matters where a vote is casted and that a group of people have a single democratic interest, i.e. that the Scots have a right to self-determination in which the Scots form one 'self'.
A comparable argument can be made for the economic arguments in favor of independence. In several flyers and on their website the Yes-campaign presents the following numbers: 'Currently Scotland has 8.4% of the UK population and we get 9.3% of UK spending. What most people don’t know is we generate 9.6% of UK taxes'.15 Again it is the case here that it is only an argument when
you assume that Scotland is separate from the rUK. So it is not an argument in favor of independence alone. It is an argument that already assumes a separation. It is an argument that assumes Scotland as a fact and rUK as another. Unlike the democratic argument this does not seem to be an argument based on the Scottish nation, but rather on Scotland as an independent economic entity. If I asked my interlocutors why they made this separation, they told me, in different words, that Scotland is a fact and the 'Scottish economy' is held back by Westminster politics. So also this argument is based on 'Scotland as a fact' which can only be justified by arguing that there is a Scottish nation, because, as omnipresent nationalism tells us, 'we live in a world of nations' (Billig 1995: 21-4).
The economic argument is presented as being a mere statement of facts rather than an argument based on a separation between two nations. It only makes sense when it is assumed that Scotland is a separate nation with a right to self-determination. Saying that the Scottish nation is not important in this argument means that this is an argument for why Scotland as an administrative entity should be independent, but doesn't address why this administrative entity would have the 'right' to be independent. This right resides in the nation, even if it is not entirely clear what is meant by the Scottish nation. The idea that Scotland has this right also returns in the 'Wish Tree'-notes (see image 9, next page). Mairi and David might not mind that the borders are moved (as discussed in §2.2), but they do see borders. They see a separation between two groups of people who govern themselves.
15
Image 9
Image 10
That's why I would say that this argument, when the importance of the nation is denied, is conflicting with the argument of a democratic deficit. The democratic argument implies that Scotland is more than a convenient reality. It means that 'the people of Scotland', i.e. the Scottish nation, have a right to self-determination and thus why not Scotland as a country but as a nation should be independent. However, my interlocutors perceived these two arguments as complementary, which means that they do experience the importance of the nation for their argument. They don't recognize it as being the nation because all kinds of different entities, like the nation and the country, are plumbed together in one word: Scotland. This is also illustrated by another 'Wish Tree'-note which said: 'Every country [emphasis added] has a right to be independent without worrying how much it will cost! -BE FREE-' (see image 10 above). Even though the word 'country' is used, the rest of the sentence implies that this is a reference to the people, the nation, because of the reification of the country. A country cannot 'worry', but people can. So by saying that the 'country' should not have to worry, this person is actually saying the people who constitute the country should not have to worry.
How can this reification happen? It is the persuasiveness of the omnipresent ideology of nationalism. The world is filled with nations, they are all around us the whole time. Scotland is very
much present in Scotland in different shapes and forms. Scotland is an experienced reality. It is so much a reality, that it turned into one entity. An actor with one spirit and will. How does this fact get so strong? In the next section I will try to answer this question; why is Scotland such a strong idea?
3.3 A experienced fact
In his book 'Banal Nationalism' (1995) Micheal Billig analyzed how the American nation is present in everyday life of American citizens. Billig calls this banal nationalism and argues that the constant presence of the nation creates the ideological circumstances in which the 'nations of the West' are reproduced (Billig 1995: 6), i.e. banal nationalism makes the nation seem like the natural state of being. Banal nationalism indicates to people that the world is a world of nations (ibid.). The 'flagging' Billig refers to are obvious instances like the fact that the American flag is outside every school in America, but also instances of which the nationalist nature is less obvious like statements from politicians in which they assume the nation as a single entity (ibid.: 103). The instances of the less obvious type are nationalistic according to Billig, because he thinks nationalism 'far from being an intermittent mood in established nations, is the endemic condition' (ibid.: 5). Nationalism is just as much about the constant stream of references to the nation that hits people every day, as it is about the moments of outburst, for example a football match.
When Erik told me that 'Scotland is a fact', I agreed with him16. Scotland is a fact, in the
sense that it is experienced by my interlocutors as a fact and this experience is supported by the almost overwhelming presence of banal nationalism in Edinburgh I experienced. Scotland was present in different aspects of the public space in Edinburgh. It was present in the media, in the supermarket and in public organizations. In this section I will discuss the examples of banal nationalism I found in Edinburgh and how my interlocutors reacted to my findings.
Media
Scotland is present in the media on two levels. First there is the existence of Scottish media. Most of these media are explicitly referring to Scotland in their title. There is BBC Alba. Alba is the Gaelic name of Scotland. On this BBC channel Gaelic is the leading language. There is the newspaper the Scotsman. This is one of the two national Scottish newspapers. The other one is the
Herald, which actually calls itself the Herald Scotland. Then there also is the TV channel called STV, or Scotland TV. This channel broadcasts the news, soap series and game shows, created
especially for Scotland. The BBC also has special editions of UK wide shows, especially made for Scotland. One example is Newsnight Scotland. All these programs have some reference to Scotland in their name. Last but not least there is the BBC radio channel called Radio Scotland. All these
16 Although I didn't agree with him right away because I wanted to see how he would explain this 'fact'. Later returned
media are instances in which Scotland is flagged and they constantly flag Scotland in their content. The flagging of Scotland in the content of the Scottish media is the second level of Scotlands presence in the media. For example in an article written by Alasdair Reid in the
Scotsman of the fourth of June 2013, in which he argued that an independent Scotland can have a
good economy (see image 11 below). In this article he writes: 'We need to multiply such examples, and we need to inspire people from all sectors of our economy, in all our communities, to become ambassadors of change. Scotland can prosper, if we put our collective creativity to work [emphasis added]'. This is an example of maybe the most common flagging of the nation nowadays, by referring to our economy. In this citation, first of all Scotland is flagged once explicitly and a number of times implicitly. Secondly, this is a nice illustration of how Scotland is related to the reader by the use of words like 'we' and 'our'. This is one way in which banal nationalism becomes personal nationalism. This process will be discussed more extensively in chapter five of this thesis.
Image 11
Supermarkets
Let us now look at Scotlands presence in the supermarket. Scotland is present in different supermarkets in different ways. Most non-British people I spoke to about the supermarkets agreed that for example Scotland was much more present in the Lidl on Nicolson Street than it was in any Scotmid in the same area.17 But they also agreed that there were a lot of Saltires18 in all
supermarkets. It starts on the outsides of Tesco shops. These shops had stickers on their windows
17 Lidl, Scotmid and Tesco are all supermarket franchises in Edinburgh.
saying 'Enjoy the taste of Scotland...' and right next to the text there was drawn Saltire (see image 12 below). Inside the supermarkets there were references to Scotland on a lot of different products19. The most common reference to Scotland is when it is use to illustrate that products are
local products, which is most important in food (see image 13 and 14 below). Tesco, for example, had little signs sticking out of the shelves showing a Saltire and saying: 'I'm Scottish'. The fronts of the shelves near these signs would be cover by a blue band on which a lot Saltires were shown. Another way of showing that products are local, most commonly used on vegetables and meat, is just to add a sticker to the package which states that the product is produced in Scotland. Or the statement would be on the package itself. This was the case with a bottle of hand soap in the SNP headquarters in Donside, Aberdeen.
Image 12
Image 13 Image 14: An example of how locality is used to promote products
19 It must be said that the UK was also flagged in this way in the supermarkets. Some products had a sticker stating that
those were British products. It also happens in the Netherlands, so this is not a uniquely Scottish situation. However, this does happen in Scotland a lot, because of which Scotland becomes a fact for people living there.
Public Services
Thirdly, Scotland is present through public services. One example of this are the charity shops in Edinburgh. When I was on the bus in Leith we drove by a charity shop that had a big text on its window saying: 'Everything donated in Scotland, stays in Scotland'. Next to it was a big Saltire. Furthermore, when I was leafletting in Aberdeen for the SNP in the Donside by-election, I came across a sticker on the back of a car. It was a sticker of the Scottish blood bank. Another day I was driving my bike near the same spot as where I saw the charity shop and I came across a minivan of the Scottish water company. The company is called 'Scottish Water' and the van had a picture depicting the Saltire (see image 15 below). The Saltire is also used a lot by private companies. First of all I ran into a insurance brokers office and even though it did seem to be an exclusively Scottish kind of business, it still only had the Saltire as picture with their company name (see image 16 on the next page). Secondly, this truck was on the roads of Leith and the print clearly confirms the existence of Scotland as a place.
Image 16
Football
A last example is Scottish football. A lot of my interlocutors would say that there is something that is Scottish football. They were quite happy, maybe even proud, that there is something like the Scottish Football Association, even though they acknowledged that the quality of the league wasn't comparable to the English league. But, and maybe more importantly, they experienced a Scottish football culture. When I joined Iain with one of the teams he played for, the first remarks made were about my Dutch nationality and that they thus assumed that my technique would be much better than their Scottish raw technique. They told me that I would see that Scottish football was a lot different from Dutch football, because the Dutch pay more attention to technique and tactics while Scottish football was more about kick 'n rush. This is a clear example of national stereotyping through which the experience of the nation is enhanced.
3.4 An underestimated fact
All these examples show how Scotland is an integral part of my interlocutors daily lives. However, my interlocutors did not agree with me when I told them that I thought that Scotland was quite present in their daily lives. They said I probably thought this just because Edinburgh is a touristic city. This is certainly true, but still this doesn't change anything since none of my examples come from the touristic sector. Also, when I traveled to Aberdeen, Glasgow and Bute, I saw that the charity shops and supermarkets use the same commercials throughout the country. This means that this flagging of Scotland is not (or at least only to a small extent) part of the touristic sector but it
