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EXPLAINING SCOTLAND: Does the Exception Prove the Rule?

by David McCrone

Keynote address to annual AHRC Crosscurrents postgraduate conference at University of Strathclyde, 19th April 2008

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In relating culture and nation, society and state, Scotland seems very much the odd one out.  Somehow, it seems, the transformation enacted by what we now call ‘nationalism’, the cultural, social and economic revolution of that last two centuries, passed it by.  On the face of it, Scotland does not have sufficiently distinctive cultural markers such as language, religion, compared with England, and this has suggested to some writers that its ’nationalism’ is weak or of a peculiar sort, leading to its incorporation within the UK.  This paper argues that such a view fails to take into account the underlying processes of cultural and political distinctiveness which, in Scotland, take the form of a developing ‘frame of reference’ through which social, cultural and political processes are increasingly refracted.  As a result, regaining a parliament, albeit one with devolved powers, in 1999 should be seen as the beginning, not the end, of Scottish self-government in the 21st century.

pdf   Download Explaining Scotland: Does the Exception Prove the Rule? as a PDF file.

(Published Online: 12 May 2008)

 

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