Scottish Affairs, no.

67, spring 2009

STATING THE OBVIOUS:

TEN TRUTHS ABOUT NATIONAL IDENTITY
Frank Bechhofer and David McCrone
Talk about national identity is everywhere. Anyone who read the newspapers,
listened to the radio, or watched television in the last 24 hours will almost
certainly have seen or heard references to national identity, be this Scottish,
English or British. Comments about national identity are the stuff of radio
phone-ins, the commonplace discourse of politicians, journalists and many
people one meets socially.

Everyone seems to have views on national identity and regards themselves as

well informed about it. Consider the following statements.

Most Scots have to all intents and purposes ceased to think of themselves as
British

Undoubtedly until relatively recent times many, perhaps even most, Scots
felt themselves to be British. This has been steadily eroded by factors such
as the ever increasing swell of nationalism, the attraction of claiming a
large part of the U K ' s oil revenues, and the determination to preserve the
Union shared by Margaret Thatcher's heartily disliked Conservative
government, and New Labour alike.

Frank Bechhofer is Emeritus Professor ofSocial Researc, and David McCrone is

Professor of Sociology, both at the University of Edinburgh. The authors are grateful
to The Leverhulme Trustfor supporting research on national identity since 999, and
in particularfor their most recent grant which has enabled them to commission the
National and the Scottish Centre for Social Research to ask the questions in the 2006
surveys which are reported in this article. It is the product of a collegiate form of
working in which the data, the analysis and the drafts have been discussed by both
authors throughout, and they are equally responsiblefor it.

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 Scottish Affairs

Having a parliament has made Scots feel more Scottish

The Scottish Parliament was created by a social movement from below

rather than a top down political decision. This movement was fuelled to a
considerable extent by a sense of Scottishness. Nothing succeeds like
success, and devolution has further strengthened the sense of being
Scottish.

'Exclusive' Scots - those who deny they are British - are making a political
statement: they want independence and back the SNP

It seems obvious that Scots who have ceased to think of themselves as

British will wish to take the further step to independence and thus back the
SNP.

The English have woken up to their Englishness because the Scots have a
parliament, they resent Scots interfering in English a/fairs at Westminster
and think there should be an English Parliament

An almost inevitable consequence of the creation of the Scottish

Parliament has been an increasing tendency for the English to contemplate
their own situation leading both to an increase in their sense of
Englishness and a greater awareness of the West Lothian Question in its
varying forms.
Such comments are the stuff of everyday life in to-day's Scotland, not perhaps
'truths which we hold to be self-evident' but certainly unsurprising to many. I f
they were presented as the outcomes of extensive and quite expensive
sociological research, there might well be questions raised about why
academics in general, and sociologists in particular persist in peddling the
obvious.

All four of those statements are prima facie credible, and while there will be
some among our readers (and the general public) who are suspicious of them,
experience suggests that there will be many who believe they have more than a
grain of truth, and indeed are substantially correct. I f presented with sufficient
authority, they lure people into feeling that 'they must be true'. Yet to varying
degrees they are all false or only very partially true. This article is then in the
tradition of a long and worthy sociological activity, that of debunking the
obvious.

8
 Ten Truths About National Identity

As long ago as 1949, Paul Lazarsfeld published an extended review of a book

by Samuel Stouffer, The American Soldier. In his introduction to the review
he quoted Stouffer as saying the book was written for three audiences: the
historian, the military man and the social scientist. Lazarsfeld argued, and we
should remember that this was in 1949, relatively early days for social science
even in America, that it was just as important to appeal to the educated layman
with an interest in social science, an ambition which remains as relevant to
day. After a brief account of the strengths and weaknesses of the survey
method, he commented that 'from time to time, the argument is advanced that
surveys only put into complicated form observations which are already
obvious to everyone'. He went on (1949, p.380) to set out six statements with
1
a brief gloss as to why people might think these to be correct . For instance
that: Better educated men showed more psycho-neurotic symptoms than those
with less education (because the man-in-the-street is often said to be less
mentally unstable than intellectuals); and that White privates were more eager
to become non-coms than Negroes (because the lack of ambition among
Negroes was almost proverbial). So, he asked, why spend time and money to
establish such obvious findings? Because, he went on to say, every one of the
statements was the direct opposite of what was actually found.

Is it then true that 'Most Scots have ceased to think of themselves as British'?
There are various ways of asking this question but the subtlest allows people
to mix and match the two identities such that they can be only Scottish, only
British, more of one than the other, or equally both. When we do this, around
four in ten people bom and resident in Scotland say they are Scottish not
2
British . It follows that most Scots have not ceased to think of themselves as
British, although 35 per cent do say they are more Scottish than British. T o be
sure, i f one does the survey equivalent of hitting people over the head with a
blunt instrument and forces them to choose just one national identity, then
those who say they are British, i f push comes to shove, make up only one in
five, and that's in a good year for British identification. Over seven out often,
on the other hand, opt for 'Scottish'. Has this rather crude indicator remained
stable over time? I f we go back until 1979 the proportions were 56 per cent
Scottish and 38 per cent British, not quite parity, but 1.5 to 1. By the 1990s,

The statements are exactly as Lazarsfeld gave them; the glosses have been
paraphrased in the interests of brevity but use a version ofhis words throughout.
2
Unless otherwise stated, data in this article come from the Scottish Social Attitudes
Survey and the British Social Attitudes Survey, 2006.

9
 Scottish Affairs

three times more people said Scottish than British, and it has changed very
little since then. How about the subtler and sociologically preferable measure,
mentioned above, which allows people to choose from a range of options ?
That has remained pretty stable over the last decade, though the evidence
seems to be that somewhere in the 1980s a step-change occurred such that
most people - this time two-thirds and more - said they were Scottish first;
and it's stayed that way ever since.

Lying behind much of the conjecture about changes in national identity is the
agitation for, and creation of, a Scottish parliament in 1999. Surely, then, it
must be true that 'having a parliament has made Scots feel more Scottish 1
After all, it is very plausible to suggest that not only did a rise in feeling
Scottish lead to the setting up of the parliament in the first place, but it has
become possibly the way of doing Scottish politics, reflected in its coverage in
the Scottish media. And yet in discussing the evidence for our first 'obvious
truth', we pointed out that Scots were already Scottish to a very high degree
when devolution became a virtual certainty in 1997. And there hasn't been a
sudden rise in the proportions saying they are Scottish during the lifetime of
the parliament. I f there hasn't been a rise in the numbers of people saying they
are Scottish, then the parliament cannot have made people feel more Scottish.

One could argue, of course, that it's not the proportions which matter so much
as the reasons people give for feeling Scottish. While the percentage of people
saying they are Scottish has not changed very much in the last decade, their
reasons for so doing might have. Do, then, people who give priority to being
Scottish say it's because the parliament has been set up? In fact, only 29 per
cent of such people do so, suggesting that there is only a weak association
between national identity and devolution. Our third assertion, that 'Exclusive'
Scots - those who deny they are British - are making a political statement:
they want independence and back the SNP' takes us further into this assumed
association between national identity and politics. Is it weak even in this group
of 'exclusive' Scots who will have no truck with being British? While
virtually half of SNP supporters (49 per cent) are 'exclusive' Scots, that is,
they say they are Scottish not British, i f we look through the other end of the
telescope, we find that only 27 percent of 'exclusive' Scots support the SNP;
which means of course that around three-quarters do not. In fact, more

We are referring here to the so-called Morenofivepoint scale: Scottish not British,
more Scottish than British, equally Scottish and British, more British than Scottish, and
British not Scottish.

10
 Ten Truths About National Identity
4
'exclusive' Scots support Labour than the SNP (31%) . Surely though, the
relationship between national identity and constitutional preference must be
stronger? Yet again, this seemingly obvious 'fact' is false. Those who say they
are Scottish not British are more or less evenly split between those preferring
independence (45%) and those preferring devolution (44%). Also false is the
seemingly self-evident reverse assertion. Those who give priority to being
British give devolution as their preferred option (50%), and only one-third of
these self-defining 'Brits' don't want a parliament at all, the extreme 'unionist'
option. In other words, it's hard to draw the conclusion that saying you are
Scottish or indeed British is a 'political' act in any straightforward way.

The fourth of our seemingly obvious statements "The English have woken up
to their Englishness because the Scots have a parliament, they resent Scots
interfering in English affairs at Westminster and think there should be an
English Parliament' offers an intriguing possibility. It could be that it's not the
Scots who have shifted their national identity, but the English, in the wake of
devolution and that this has had important consequences. In fact, the English
have not woken up to their Englishness; people in England appear to have
become less British, rather than more English. Thus, the percentage saying
they are only or mainly British has fallen from 25 per cent in 1999, to 14 per
cent in 2006, whereas those saying they are equally English and British shifts
from 37 per cent to 45 per cent. There is less change among the 'only or
mainly English' (from 32 per cent to 37 per cent) (Bechhofer and McCrone
5
2008) . Let us now consider the third part of the statement. It's not uncommon
to hear or read such statements as this in the media: that there i s resentment
over the Scots having their parliament while still (over)active in the British
one, voting on 'English' matters, while having no direct say on what happens
in their own Scottish constituencies (the West Lothian Question). Have
English people, especially those describing themselves as English not British
(the 'exclusive' English), become resentful? Do they want their own - English
- parliament? The short answer is - no. More than half (54%) think England
should be governed as at present (from Westminster), and only just over a
quarter (28%) that there should be an English parliament as such. Have they
then developed this view since devolution? It's hard to argue that there is a

4
Thesefigures relate to all respondents currently living in Scotland. If wefocus only
on those born and living in Scotland ('natives'), the figures are not very different: 52%
ofSNP identifiers are 'exclusive' Scots, and 27% ofsuch Scots identify with the SNP.
s
Preliminary work on the 2008 BSA data suggests very little change from these figures

II
 Scottish Affairs

groundswell in favour of an English, as opposed to a British, parliament, for in

1999, when devolution happened, just under a quarter (23%) wanted an
English parliament, and 59 per cent a British one. So there has been a very
modest 5 percentage point rise in those wanting an English parliament and a
similar fall in those wanting a British one.

Of course, wanting, or not, an English parliament has nothing directly to do

with the West Lothian Question as such. Asked in the British Social Attitudes
survey of 2007 to respond to the statement: 'Scottish MPs should no longer be
allowed to vote on English legislation', six out of ten agreed (one in four
'strongly'), suggesting that the second half of our initial statement, the English
resent Scots interfering in English affairs at Westminster, does have some
truth. Further, 37 per cent of the 'exclusive' English, those who describe
themselves as English not British, think that Scotland has more than its share
of public spending, but virtually the same proportion - 35 per cent - think it i s
'pretty fair', and so the evidence on this is evenly balanced .

What none of these data do i s directly address the causal question: have the
English woken up to their Englishness because the Scots have a parliament? In
the British Social Attitudes survey in 2006 we did ask a question of those who
prioritised being English: ' I feel more English now that Scotland has its own
parliament and Wales its national assembly'. Only a third, 34 percent of
7
English people , agreed (splitting more or less equally between 'strongly
agreed' and 'agreed') which i s hardly a ringing endorsement for this
apparently self-evident statement. T o summarise the evidence we have
presented, the best we can say in support of the fourth of our 'truisms' i s that
during the lifetime of the Scottish parliament the English have become less
8
' B r i t i s h ' . T o credit (or blame) devolution with making the English feel
English would be to go against such firm evidence as we have available,
although the potential secular shift towards 'national' (English) rather than
'state' (British) identity remains one of the intriguing issues of our day.

' 8% think Scotland gets 'less than itsfair share'.

7
The percentage is the same, 34%, whether one takes people resident in England, or
English-born residents.
8
In 1999, 25% of people living in England said they were only or mainly British,
compared with 14% in 2006. Thefigures for only or mainly English were 32% and
37% respectively.

12
 Ten Truths About National Identity

By this point in our argument, the reader will clearly be aware that any
statement we put up for consideration must be wrong, or at least requires
heavy conditioning. In the remaining part of the article, we will set up a few
more 'obvious truths', no longer with a view to possibly wrong footing the
reader, but to hammer home the point that one cannot take too much for
granted, as well as emphasising the value of having good evidence for what
you say about national identity. We offer this in the spirit of Tom Burns, the
first professor of sociology at Edinburgh University, who observed that: ' I t i s
the business of sociologists to conduct a critical debate with the public about
its equipment of social institutions' (Bums 199S, p. 174).

Our fifth 'obvious truth', then, is that 'Not being English is really what being
Scottish is all about'. What makes this credible is a fairly common view that
what drives people's sense of being Scottish is a strong sense of the 'other',
namely the English. A stronger, but less immediately appealing version of this
myth of difference i s that being anti-, not simply non-, English is really what
being Scottish i s all about. There is little doubt that England i s the Scottish
9
'other' , in the sense that all forms of identity require there to be a sense of not
being someone or some group else; what social anthropologists call the
process of 'othering'. As Thomas Eriksen has commented: 'we are, not only
because we have something in common, but perhaps chiefly because we are
not them' (2004, p.57).

What, then, do native Scots think of the 400,000 English people in Scotland
(some 8% of the population of Scotland)? About half (48%) think that there is
occasional hostility to the English in Scotland. About 20% think it i s
'frequent', but on the other hand the same proportion think that it i s 'rare'. The
attitudes and behaviour of Scots are more likely to be blamed for this than the
English (25% to 8%), but over half (56%) blame both nationalities. When it

At this point, the critical reader might suggest that the authors seem to have been
taken in by their own unproven 'truth', and might properly ask what evidence we have
for this claim. Our defence would be first that in the process ofstudying Scottish
national identityfor over 15 years, this is a constant refrain in qualitative interviews
drawn from several different studies. Secondly in the latest British and Scottish Social
Attitudes surveys we have tried to construct survey questions about which national
groups peoplefeel they have most and least in common. The BSA 2008 survey suggests
that people in Englandfeel they have 'most in common' with the Scots (27%), with
Welsh (16%), Irish (15%) and Americans (13%) some way behind; thefinaloption was
French. Conversely, only 1% of English people feel they have least in common with the
Scots. The equivalent data for Scotland will not be collected until the SSA survey 2009.

13
 Scottish Affairs

comes to judging English people's 'commitment to Scotland', Scots are

neutral (most answer 4, the mid-point of a scale from 1 (really committed) to 7
(not at all committed)). However, they take a slightly more positive view of
the contribution of English people in terms of hard work and skills, answering
on average ' 5 ' on a scale from 1 (the English take Scottish jobs, housing and
health care) to 7 ('they contribute a lot'). Scots agree that English incomers
remain more loyal to their country of origin, England, than to Scotland (56%
to 20%) though this is hardly likely to cause resentment given their own strong
attachment to Scotland. Indeed, on balance, they also judge that, by and large,
Scotland would not lose its identity i f more English people came to live in
10
Scotland (49% agreeing to 3 1 % disagreeing) . In fact, Scots seem to rate
'cultural' matters (landscape, music and sport) as twice as important as
'political' ones (how the country is governed) when it comes to defining what
it means to be Scottish. Key cultural icons such as a sense of equality, Scottish
landscape, music and the arts, and the national flag are important signifiers of
national identity. In short, while Scots recognise the English as the significant
'other', there i s more to being Scottish than simply not being English, and in
particular disliking English people.

The next two 'obvious truths' relate to the criteria for being Scottish, so let us
consider them in tandem. These are: 'Being Scottish is all about blood and
roots. Unless you can trace your ancestry back a goodfew generations, you 're
not really Scottish'; and 'You can't be Scottish if you weren't born here. You
are what you are, and you can't change it.' Convincing as they both are to
some people, they are also potentially contradictory. Those who can trace their
ancestry back several generations may not have been born here. Many people
who have been born here have no Scottish ancestry. Basically, they crystallise
a debate about what it takes to be Scottish. I s it a matter of ancestry ('blood
and roots'), or birth, or indeed can you become Scottish by choosing to live
here and thereby making your commitment to Scotland? The first makes its
appeal to 'ethnicity'; hence, 'Homecoming Scotland 2009' ('Retracing the
footsteps of your ancestors will not only bring the past to life, it will also make
your home coming the most dynamic and exciting experience of your life.':
http://www.homecomingscotland2009.com). The second gives pride of place
to birth as the prime criterion of Scottishness. The third i s the more 'civic'
model, whereby choosing to live and work in Scotland, regardless of birth and

These data are takenfromthe Scottish Social Attitudes survey 2003

14
 Ten Truths About National Identity

ancestry - things none of us have control over - confers Scottish national

identity upon the person who chooses it.

By and large, it's fair to say that birth is the most important marker of Scottish
national identity (82% think it a 'very' or 'fairly' important criterion),
followed closely by ancestry (73%), and residence (65%)". On the other
hand, while just under half (44%) would accept the claim of a white English-
bom person, living in Scotland, to be Scottish, this rises to 58% i f they have a
Scottish accent, and to 8 1 % i f they also have Scottish parents. The comparable
figures for a notional non-white person with the same set of characteristics are
12
38 per cent, 50 per cent and 68 per cent . We will have more to say about this
differential between white and non-white later in this article.

Do these data, then, confirm or refute the statements about blood, roots, and
birth? In truth, it is not straightforward. For most people, the taken-for-granted
criterion (in England as well as in Scotland) i s where you were bom, and as
the phrase has it, this is an accident (of birth), and you can't change it, let
alone influence it. On the other hand, you can mitigate its effects by including
other markers - accent, and parentage. In other words, birth really matters, but
you can offset its effects in terms of your claim i f you have other markers
available to you. In short, being Scottish is not simply about blood and roots,
nor simply about birth though birth i s the marker which outranks all others;
and finally you can be taken as Scottish even i f you weren't bom here.

The truth status of the next pair of statements, eight and nine, while important,
perhaps matters less than what they tell us about whether Scottish national
identity is inclusive or not. The first implies that Scots are more liberal than
the English, while the second states that i f you are an 'exclusive' Scot, you're
liable to be less tolerant of 'outsiders'. The first, that Scots are more willing
than the English to accept non-white people as Scottish, reflects a fairly
common belief that Scots are in general more welcoming than other people of
outsiders, more tolerant, and in particular less racist (after all, the British
National Party consistently loses its deposits in Scottish elections at all levels).
This, of course, might simply be a comforting tale to avoid confronting racism
in Scotland, whether aimed at non-white people or, indeed, English incomers.
Above all, this belief is held in comparative terms vis-a-vis England. The
simple way to do the comparison is to look at the equivalent questions in the

Scottish election study, 1997

These data comefrom the Scottish Social Attitudes survey of2006

15
 Scottish Affairs

two countries (this time focusing on rejecting claims ), and we find the
following:

Rejecting claims of white person: England and Scotland compared

% rejecting claim (either White White with White with 'national'

definitely or probably) 'national' accent accent & 'national'
parents
England 52 38 17
Scotland 55 40 18
England minus Scotland -3 -2 -1

Rejecting claims of non-white person: England and Scotland compared

% rejecting claim (either Non- Non-white with Non-white with 'national
definitely or probably) white 'national' accent accent & 'national'
parents
England 51 41 25
Scotland 59 48 29
England minus Scotland -8 -7 -4
Source: SSA 2006

The most obvious conclusion to draw is that Scotland and England do not
differ very much from each other, with the differences, especially with regard
to a white person, very small. The differences are somewhat greater when it
comes to the claims of a non-white person to be Scottish in Scotland, but it too

In England, people were asked the comparable question to the one in Scotland: that
is, of a white person born in Scotland, now living permanently in England, and who
says they are English.

16
 Ten Truths About National Identity

diminishes when, first, accent and then parentage, are introduced. In other
words, the English are just as willing (or even conceivably slightly more
willing) to accept a claim from someone bom outwith the country as the Scots.
To attribute greater tolerance or indeed intolerance to one or other national
group is, as the legal verdict has it, not proven but to hold that Scots are more
willing than the English to accept non-white people as Scottish is clearly
incorrect.

Our ninth 'obvious truth', is that if you are an 'exclusive' Scot, you are less
likely to accept the claim from an English person or a non-white person that
they are Scottish. In other words, i f you think of yourself as Scottish and not
British, you are likely to use a fairly restrictive set of criteria as to who is a
Scot when it comes to people bom in England or people who are non-white. In
all probability the alert reader will have spotted that just to keep them on their
toes, we have with tongue in cheek here inserted an 'obvious truth' which is
indeed, by and large, true. Also, there i s a nice symmetry between Scotland
and England withregardto those who adopt an 'exclusive' identity. The first
table presents the rejection rates for whites bom in the 'other' country, and the
second table does the same for non-whites.

Refecting claims of white person by 'exclusives': England and Scotland

compared

% rejecting claim (either White White with White with 'national'

definitely or probably) 'national' accent accent & 'national'
parents

England 64 51 26
Scotland 64 50 22

England minus Scotland 0 +1 +4

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 Scottish Affairs

Rejecting claims of non-white person by 'exclusives ': England and Scotland

compared | |

% rejecting claim (either Non- Non-white with Non-white with 'national

definitely or probably) white 'national' accent accent & 'national'
parents

England 69 58 39

Scotland 68 56 37

England minus Scotland +1 +2 +2

Source: B S A & SSA 2006

The differences between England and Scotland in terms of the tendency of
those with exclusive national identities to reject the claims, whether of white
or non-white claimants, are minuscule. Both groups, however, are more
willing to reject claims than their non-exclusive counterparts, whether they
come from a white or a non-white person. In other words, it seems that i f you
think of yourself as strongly 'national', whether Scottish or English, you
probably see yourself as belonging to a fairly exclusive club for which you
would charge a higher premium for entry. It is the case, however, that once
you have factored in accent and parentage, most 'exclusives' are prepared to
accept the claims, though i f you are non-white, you are more likely to be
rejected, regardless of which side of the border you live on.

The final 'obvious truth' we examine relates to those who would question
whether national identity really matters anyway. The statement goes
something like this: 'National identity varies so greatly depending on which
class you are, how old you are, and whether you are a man or a woman, that
in itself it tells us very little.' T o put it in terms of a sociological debate of
yesteryear, the argument might be that national identity is mere false
consciousness; that other social characteristics such as social class, or gender
or age are more important, or at least the variations within them are such as to
make any claims that national identity matters across the spectrum
insignificant. Put somewhat polemically, people who take this view might say
that those who hold most to 'being Scottish' are men, young people and the
working class, with women, older people and the middle class less susceptible
to the enchantments of national identity. On the face of it, that is perhaps a not
unconvincing position.

18
 Ten Truths About National Identity

In fact, we do not find large variations between sexes, or age groups in

Scotland with regard to how people describe themselves in national identity
terms. For example, 31 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women say they are
Scottish not British; 34 per cent of 18-24 year olds, and 32 per cent of those 65
and over say the same. It is the case that manual workers (43%) are more
likely to do so than those in managerial occupations (25%), but only because
the latter group are more likely than the former to opt for the equally Scottish
and British category (29% to 15%). Similarly, people with university degrees
are more likely to say they are 'more Scottish than British' than 'Scottish not
British' (35% to 16%) whereas those with no educational qualifications
reverse that (29% to 40%). It remains the case however that a majority of all
sexes, age groups, social classes and educational groups opt to say they are
only or mainly Scottish. Indeed, however we define national identity, and the
Moreno scale i s , in our view, more sophisticated than most, we find that
people in Scotland describe themselves in national identity terms (Bechhofer
and McCrone 2008).

This point is confirmed in other work we have done, which places national
identity in the context of other social identities. When we asked people to
place national identity - being Scottish - in a list of social identities - social
class, age, gender, religion, being a parent, marital status and so on - we found
that no matter how much we toughened up the question (such as asking about
national identity only after people had ranked other social identities important
to them), we still found a significant number of Scots put being Scottish on a
par with being a parent and a wife/husband/partner. In other words, we can be
pretty sure that national identity in Scotland is not epiphenomenal, that i s ,
simply the reflection of other social characteristics which people have.

CONCLUSION

By this stage, the reader, sated with these false 'obvious truths', perhaps
fooled or convinced by few or none of them, may well be saying: so what?
Does it matter that some people buy into them or not? Back in the 1920s, the
Chicago sociologist W. I . Thomas came up with the concept of the 'definition
of the situation', namely, that i f people believed something to be true they
acted out its consequences. B y this, Thomas did not mean that people were at
liberty to believe what they liked; merely that i f sociologists want to
understand why people do and say things, we need to understand how they see
and explain the world about them; in the words of a book edited by the

19
 Scottish Affairs

historians Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson, there are 'myths we live by'
(Samuel and Thompson 1990).
Is it not enough to know that people live by myths and to seek to partially
comprehend them? No. In his essay on sociological explanation, Tom Bums
commented:

The purpose of sociology is to achieve an understanding of social

behaviour and social institutions which is different from that current
among the people through whose conduct the institutions exist; an
understanding which is not only different but new and better. The practice
of sociology is criticism. (1995, p.174).
That should make us pause; different, maybe; but better! Not in the sense that
sociology has answers to basic human dilemmas, but in the sense that,
properly done, it assembles evidence about social practices and beliefs which
may lead society to rethink them, evidence which, as everyday citizens, we are
not in a position to verify easily. Here is Lazarsfeld's lengthy comment about
natural and social sciences, and why the latter is more difficult than the
former:

Finding regularities and determining criteria of significance are concerns

the social sciences have in common with the natural sciences. But there
are crucial differences between the two fields of enquiry. The world of
social events is much less 'visible' than therealmof nature. That bodies
fall to the ground, that things are hot or cold, that iron becomes rusty, are
all immediately obvious. It is much more difficult to realize that ideas of
right and wrong vary in different cultures; that customs may serve a
different function from the one which the people practising them believe
they are serving; that the same person may show marked contrasts in his
behaviour as a member of a family and as a member of an occupational
group. (1949, p.379)

The point Lazarsfeld, like Bums, i s making here is not that sociological
knowledge is somehow superior in a moral sense, but that it is not readily
accessible as commonsense or everyday belief. The function of ferreting out
(his metaphor) what people think and how they behave ' i s a vast and difficult
undertaking', and one which can lead to misunderstandings. I f then, one
reports, as he puts it, a 'prevailing regularity, many readers respond to it by
thinking "of course that is the way things are'" (op. cit., p. 379).

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 Ten Truths About National Identity

Let us, then, return to our obvious truths about national identity, our Scotch
myths. First, an explanation. What we mean by myth is not what is palpably
untrue (the moon i s made of green cheese, or even warm soup); we use it in an
anthropological sense as a perspective, a guide which people use to sort out
social reality. As Clyde Mitchell once observed in his dictionary definition,
myths operate 'to record and present the moral system whereby present
attitudes and actions are ordered and validated' (1968, p. 122). I f it i s true that
people believe that Scots are no longer Brits; that devolution has made them
feel more Scottish, and indeed made the English feel more English; and that
those who say they are Scottish not British are making a political statement
14
about Scotland's constitutional future and their party allegiances , then we
should as social scientists ask why these beliefs are held.

Part of the explanation why such myths are abroad may lie in the fact that they
are reservoirs of legitimation for belief and action, and in that regard the recent
political history of the recovery of a Scottish parliament, albeit one with
devolved powers, has enlivened debate and discussion about what it means to
be Scottish. Turning the myth on its head somewhat, it would not be beyond
expectation that there has been a close interaction between Scottish national
identity and the recovery of that parliament, even to the point of that
relationship being 'self-evident'. Similarly, myths don't necessarily have to be
positive ones. There is a heady stream of assumptions and tendentious writing
about a Scottish lack of self-confidence, a cringe, which is all too familiar to
15
those who know better and who read this journal . We have examined similar
myths about the content of being Scottish: that it is little more than not being
English; that it i s ethnic and not civic, and so on. In fact, there i s a lot more to
being Scottish than not being English, and it has, i f anything, a cultural rather
than a strongly political content. What our evidence also shows i s that Scots
and English are far more alike than different when it comes to the criteria for
national identity (a matter of birthplace, mainly), as they are similar in judging
who i s or i s not a 'national'. Finally, we can say fairly unequivocally that

The alert reader might ask whether in setting out these statements, we should have
provided hard evidence that people actually do believe these things. Our reply would
be that while this is strictly correct, they are prima facie entirely credible, that we have
evidence that they are not as true and obvious as they may seem, and crucially that we
are in a position to investigate their truth status. Ifthe reader didn'tfall for the myths
either, then that is entirely to their credit.
15
See, for example, Anthony Cohen's review in Scottish A/fairs (Vol. 49, 2004) of
Carol Craig's book Scots' Crisis of Confidence.

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 Scottish Affairs

national identity matters a lot to Scots (less so to the English, but more than i s
sometimes made out), and that it i s fairly constant among social classes, age
groups, genders, and how much (or little) education you have had. In other
words, national identity in Scotland is not epiphenomenal, but i s instead a
prism for seeing the social world and interpreting it accordingly.

Do myths matter, then? As Lazarsfeld commented, the trouble with what

seems 'obvious' is that it 'should really be turned on its head' (1949, p. 380).
That is the role for the social scientist; less to change the world, than to
understand it. Changing the world in the light of that understanding is a wholly
admirable aim for social scientists but moves their activities from the social
scientific sphere into the realm of informed political action. It is not necessary
for social scientists to seek by their own actions to change the world but it is
incumbent on them to at least strive to ensure that political and social action i s
based on as sound information and understanding as possible. Lest we be
misunderstood, let us say in closing that this is in no way to suggest that social
scientists provide absolute truth. A l l the findings and the discussion reported
in this article depend on concepts, even theories, which can be contested, and
depend on methodologies with varying strengths and weaknesses. That said,
we contend that they are infinitely preferable as a basis for action to what i s
often described approvingly as everyday common sense.

REFERENCES
Bechhofer, Frank and McCrone, David (2008) 'Talking the talk: national identity in
th
England and Scotland', in British Social Attitudes 24 Report eds. A. Park et
al., Sage Publications, London.
Burns, Tom (1995) 'Sociological Explanation', in Description, Explanation and
Understanding: selected writings, Edinburgh University Press.
Eriksen, Thomas (2004) 'Place, kinship and the case for non-ethnic nations', in
Nations and Nationalism, vol.10, No. 1-2.49-62.
Lazarsfeld, Paul (1949) 'The American Soldier - An Expository Review', in The
Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 3.377-404.
Mitchell, Clyde (1968) A Dictionary of Sociology, Routledge and Kegan Paul,
London.
Samuel, Raphael and Thompson, Paul eds. (1990) The Myths We Live By, Routledge,
London.
February 2009

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