Who are we?

Prohlematising national
identity'

David McCrone, Robert Stewart, Richard

Kiely and Frank Bechhofer

Abstract

While the concem with 'identity politics' has grown in recent years, there
are few studies of the ways in which people order and negotiate their
national identities. The study reported here focuses on the identities used
by members of the arts and landed elites in Scotland in the assertion of
perceived cultural differences between Scots and non-Scots. These two
groups have good reason to be sensitive to the problematic and negoti-
ated nature of national identity in a changing cultural and political con-
text in Scotland. The raw materials of national identity, in particular,
birth, residence and ancestry, are used by individuals in these groups to
make claims which are sustained by and through social interaction in the
course of which various 'identity claims' are made and received in vari-
ous ways.

Introduction

Questions of 'national identity' are becoming highly salient in the

last decade of the 20th century Whether in the post-communist
East or the post-industrial West, challenges to state power have fre-
quently taken the form of disputes over nationality and political
identity. The rise of nationalism and regionalism is one obvious
manifestation of this. 'Identity pohtics' - disputes about to whom
people give their loyalty - are not simply confined to the awkward
periphery, to places like the former Yugoslavia and Northem
Ireland which were hitherto treated as the result of incomplete
incorporation into the modem political process. There are few mod-
em states which are not faced with ethnic or territorial challenges to
their taken-for-granted notions of nationality
While exploring 'identity politics' is by no means straightforward,

foR^l^^ Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998. Pubhshed by Blackwell Publishers,
1U8 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 lJF, UK and 350 Main Street, Maiden, MA 02148, USA.
David McCrone, Robert Stewart, Richard Kiely and Frank Bechhofer

the 'British' Isles is a good place to study the impact of new identity
politics. To a much greater extent than its European neighbours,
there is something inherently problematic and contested about
British identity (McCrone, 1997). Britishness is a fairly modem con-
struction bom of the 1707 Union between Scotland and England,
and as Linda CoUey has pointed out, it overlay older 'national'
identities, but did not destroy them (CoUey, 1992). The resolution of
'national identities' was, for much of the twentieth century, deemed
to be relatively straightforward. To be Scottish (or English, or
Welsh) was a complementary aspect of being British, which in tum
had two aspects - a UK one, and an overseas one - both reflected in
rule from a Westminster 'imperial' parliament. These were nested
identities in the main, to be seen as a set of concentric circles mov-
ing outward from the local to the (Scottish-)national to the British
to the imperial and so on (Smout, 1994).
The late 20th century has seen new challenges of a more overtly
nationalistic kind. 'Britishness' seems to have waned as older
'national' identities have grown. Hence, the contest between 'state'
and 'national' identities in these islands seems particularly fertile
ground in which to examine identity pohtics (Cohen, R., 1994).
Most people living in Scotland give primacy these days to being
Scottish (their national identity) rather than British (state identity).
For example, if forced to choose, nearly three times as many Scots
opt for being Scottish over being British (in the 1992 Scottish
Election Study 72% of respondents opted for the former and only
25% for the latter).^ When multiple choices operate, we find that
83% opt for being Scottish, 51% for being British, and 12% for
being European (1997 Scottish Election Study).^ Only 45% of those
who say they are 'Scots' opt for being British too.
In the last decade attempts have been made to constmct national
identity scales by asking respondents to indicate, for example, how
Scottish and British they felt, and in what combination if any.'*
Recent Scottish results are as follow in table 1.
These data confirm the priority people in Scotland give to their
Scottishness over their Britishness. We can see this more clearly if
we combine the extreme categories (Scottish not British, and More
Scottish than British, on the one hand; and British not Scottish,
and More British than Scottish, on the other). Hence, while 61%
give priority to being Scottish (categories 1 and 2) only 8% give pri-
ority to being British (categories 4 and 5), a ratio of nearly 8 to 1.
The results from Wales and England also confirm the relative
strength of Scottish national identity. In Wales, 42% give priority to

630 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998

 Problematising national identity

Table 1
National identity
percentage in
column July 1987 Sept 1991 April 1992 SES 1992 SES 1997

Scottish not 39 40 32 19 21
British
More Scottish 30 29 29 40 40
than British
Equally 19 21 29 33 25
Scottish and
British
More British 4 3 3 3 5
than Scottish
British not 6 4 6 3 3
Scottish
None of these 2 3 1 2 6
Sample size 1021 1042 1056 857 881
Sources: July 1987: L. Moreno (1988); September 1991 and April 1992: The
Scotsman, SES 1992: Scottish Election Survey 1992; Scottish Election Study 1997.

being Welsh over being British, and 25% to being British over being
Welsh. In England, almost half say they are equally English and
British, with the rest dividing almost equally between those fore-
fronting their Englishness or their Britishness (British Election
Study 1997; see table 9.6 in A. Brown et al, 1998).
We may debate what these labels mean: can we be sure, for exam-
ple, that the terms 'Scottish' and 'British' evoke the same thing in
each category above? However, there is little doubt that the results
are consistent, and that they correlate in surveys with broadly the
same attributes - age, gender, and social class. Young people, with
manual workers, for example, are more likely to say they are
Scottish, while older people, women and the middle classes are
more 'centrist' in their identities (choosing Scottish and British),
while no identifiable social group opts for being 'British' first and
foremost.
Getting consistent results like this is useful, but only a first step in
beginning to understand national identity. We need to get some
angle on how it varies, and above all what people mean when they
say they are 'Scottish', 'British' and so on. We now appreciate that
being Scottish and being British are to a much greater extent than

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David McCrone, Robert Stewart, Richard Kiely and Frank Bechhofer

previously competing rather than complementary identities. The

focus has been on the fragile nature of Britishness (Naim, 1977;
Colley, 1992) rather than on how both sets of identities are con-
structed and mobilised by people themselves.
This paper focuses on the 'Scottish' dimension, and asks what
people mean when they claim to be Scottish. Part of the difficulty is
that in current political and cultural contexts Scottishness is easily
essentialised. Scotland is, for example, geographically bounded, for
there are no places which are contested territories with the possible
exception of Berwick-upon-Tweed on the Scottish-English border^
(or, for that matter, the Northem Isles of Shetland and Orkney
which have a historic allegiance as well as geographical propinquity
to Norway). Scotland's boundaries have been fixed for over 500
years and there are no irredentist disputes which might help us to
illuminate what Scotland is. There is no group furth of Scotland
claiming to rejoin the 'mother-country', and no alienated territory
within Scotland seeking to leave (unlike, for example, eastern and
central Europe where competing forms of nationalism are more
common (Brubaker, 1996)).
Scotland is also historically bounded. We can project it through
historical time backwards and forwards in a fairly straightforward
and linear way. Few would dispute that Scotland has been a 'nation'
with a fairly consistent historical imagining from at least the 14th
century and the Wars of Independence with England. Similarly,
Scotland is a socially bounded 'civil society' with a distinctive set of
national institutions and jurisdictions such as the education system,
the law, a separate 'national' church, and so on, so that people in
Scotland have grown up govemed by Scottish institutions, and this
in tum helps to make them think of themselves as Scots.
This 'boundedness' makes Scottish identity largely uncontentious
and unproblematic, which is, for us as social scientists rather than
citizens, a pity. We get httle analytical purchase from contested and
divided accounts of Scottishness in the late 20th century. Yet we
know that definitions of 'Scottishness' have altered quite substan-
tially in the last century or so. For most of the 19th century the
dominant sense of Scotland was as a Protestant-Imperialist-
Unionist country in which being Scottish and being British were
complementary - what Graeme Morton (1996) has called 'unionist-
nationalism'. Nowadays, a secular-nationalist-social democratic
version of Scotland seems to predominate, in which, as we have
seen, being Scottish has priority over being British. We have here
competing or succeeding versions of Scotland, in Stuart Hall's use-

632 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998

 Problematising national identity

ful phrase cultural representations (1992: 292) of who does or does

not count in these 'Scotlands'.
For most people today Scottishness is a meaningful but largely
taken-for-granted reference point. We know, nevertheless, that
national identity is strong, at any rate vis-a-vis English identity,
because most people in Scotland give it precedence over class iden-
tity. In the 1997 Scottish Election Study, for example, twice as many
(48%) said they had more in common with a Scot of another social
class as identified with an English person of the same class (24%).^
The 1992 survey results were in similar vein (45% to 27%). So far, so
relatively straightforward.
We can use common-sense terms such as birth and residence to
unscramble different ways of being Scottish. These are two obvious
parameters, and we can add a third, ancestry. In the 1997 Scottish
Election Study respondents were asked to say how important or
unimportant each of the following was to being truly Scottish: being
bom in Scotland; living in Scotland; and having Scottish parents or
grandparents. Responses were as follows:

Table 2
birth ancestry residence

very important 48 36 30
fairly important 34 37 35
not very important 14 22 23
not at all important 3 4 10
Source: Scottish Election Survey 1997.

We can see that 82% thought that being bom in Scotland was either
very of fairly important to being Scottish, 73% that it was very or
fairly important to have Scottish parents or grandparents, and 65%
that it was very or fairly important to be living in Scotland.
Such findings surprise us little. After all, being bom in a country
is still the most taken-for-granted way of becoming a citizen (with
some exceptions such as Germany where ius sanguinis - the law of
blood - still prevails (Brubaker, 1992)), and is the common criterion
for representing one's country at sport, for example. Nevertheless,
we find that claiming a blood line is not unimportant. The British
govemment, for example, gives rights of residence in the UK to
those who can claim at least one parent or grandparent bom in

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David McCrone, Robert Stewart, Richard Kiely and Frank Bechhofer

these islands (the 'patriality' criterion). In the sporting field too

being able to claim ancestry is often used as a criterion of 'national-
ity'. Having the obligatory Scottish granny is enough to allow one
to play for Scotland at most sports. Finally, residence - ius soli - the
law of the soil confers on those who live in the territory rights to
vote and rights to welfare, as well as representative rights at sport
(in the 1980s the English cricket authorities conferred nationality
status on South African cricketers who had plied their trade in the
country for a requisite number of years to allow them to play for the
Enghsh national team).

Problematising identity

There are, then, in theory a number of ways to claim nationality

Let us explore further the three dimensions: birth, ancestry, and res-
idence. For example, one can be bom or not bom in Scotland; of
Scottish ancestry or not;^ and resident in Scotland or not (relevant
in any emigrant society, given the 'emigres' who feel they have some
birth and/or blood claim). There is, then, a strong case for saying
that, in order to get at how people order and negotiate these criteria
for nationality, we need more subtle measures than the formal sur-
vey allows. We also require a more sensitive research design which
pinpoints groups or respondents for whom nationality is especially
problematic. To this end, we have carried out a programme of
empirical research on national identity.
Our research took as its starting point the political and cultural
debate north of the border during the last 15 years or so over the
'Englishing' of Scotland. The main issue in this debate is the infiu-
ence of non-Scots, but mainly English incomers, over economic and
cultural institutions in Scotland. As sociologists, we were less inter-
ested in the validity of such claims, and more in the processes of
identity construction and claims which underlie them. We followed
Fredrik Barth's view that ethnic groups were 'categories of ascrip-
tion and identification by the actors themselves' (Barth, 1981), and
Anthony Cohen's interest in the 'political assertion of cultural dif-
ference' (Cohen, A.P, 1993). Our study was designed to focus on
the identities used by actors to categorise themselves and others in
the assertion of perceived cultural differences. We wanted to exam-
ine how Scottishness (and Englishness and 'Britishness' where rele-
vant) was a socially constmcted and negotiated category rather
than a taken-for-granted, essentialised one.

634 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998

 Problematising national identity

We departed from the conventional focus of 'ethnic' research on

subordinated and relatively powerless groups by designing our study
to examine two elite groups, landowners and arts managers in
Scotland. While there are other such groups (such as the educa-
tional elite) who have attracted media and public attention, both
land and the arts are prime areas for the assertion of cultural differ-
ence. They do, of course, differ in crucial respects. Land is a mater-
ial, marketable commodity which can be bought and sold, as well as
inherited. On the other hand, heading an arts organisation is a mat-
ter of career competence, based on qualifications and experience,
where posts have no capacity to be bought, sold or inherited.
Our general approach sees identities as used by actors to categorise
themselves and others in the assertion of perceived cultural differ-
ences. Some cultural differences will be used as signals of difference
while others will be played down or ignored. Scottishness (and of
course Englishness) becomes a socially constructed and negotiated
category (McCrone, 1992: 29). For example, in the context of an elite
group, the Scots among its members may regard themselves as a
national group, and may assign nationality to their English counter-
parts. They in tum may accept or attempt to deny this assertion of
cultural difference; those who accept it may attempt to downplay its
importance. And what is even more interesting sociologically are the
processes through which, and structural circumstances under which,
these different views are arrived at and sustained. Why people hold
varying views is the cmcial question here.
Our aim was to investigate the self-perceptions and identity-
definitions of Scots and non-Scots ahke, how they perceive their
peers, and how their peers perceive them. The phenomenological
thmst of the study required appropriate methodology (described
below), and sought to get away from the common-sense notion that
national identities were essential, given, and unproblematic. That
view lay behind our interest in problematic instances of identity
claims and recognition, for we felt that this aspect of identity had
been almost entirely ignored. As we spell out below, we are even
more strongly of this view having done the study, as we have found
very little written on this subject outwith social anthropology, and
we believe that our research is pioneering in these respects.

Method
The main part of our study consisted of 219 semi-structured
interviews with members of the landed (N = 118) and arts elites

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David McCrone, Robert Stewart, Richard Kiely and Frank Bechhofer

(N = 101) in Scotland. At the same time, media and press accounts

of Anglicisation over the last ten years were collected. Other sec-
ondary material on 'Englishing' such as migration statistics and rel-
evant studies and surveys were also collected.
We constructed our interview samples in different ways. The
landowners came from three contrasting geographical areas in
which the issue of 'foreign' ownership has been identified: a
Highland area devoted largely to sporting interests; the North-East,
an area of productive arable farming reputed to have seen major in-
migration; and the Borders, a Lowland area given over to produc-
tive livestock.
Highland estates are the classic focus of complaints about non-
Scots. The Highlands and the North-East are both seen as reposito-
ries of aspects of Scottish culture which are believed to be under
attack. The Borders provides a different kind of fanning and cul-
ture, and its proximity to England offers the opportunity to see how
incomers are perceived there. We focused on owners of estates and
farms which are large by the standards of the areas. Initially we
interviewed major land agents dealing with these areas both to
obtain their views of ownership change, and to identify incomers. It
was also necessary to identify landowners from the local press and
by snowballing. Respondents were chosen by identifying estates and
farms in an area, and as far as possible interviewing the owners of
contiguous or neighbouring properties, while achieving roughly
equal numbers of Scots and non-Scots in each area. Purely in order
to choose people for interview, and making no assumptions about
their self-identity, we classified respondents as Scots if they had
been bom in Scotland or were of Scottish descent.
The cultural elite was chosen by employing the 'reputational'
method used in classical power elite studies. The customary criti-
cism that the technique does not lead to the 'true' power holders but
to a network of those believed to be important made it highly
appropriate for our purposes. We started the process by approach-
ing such bodies as the Scottish Arts Council, and arts editors of the
press in Scotland asking them to name the leading cultural institu-
tions and individuals, moving on to those named in this first sweep,
and so on. We thus built up a picture of those individuals who are
deemed infiuential in running the arts in Scotland, subsequently
concentrating on those most frequently named. Respondents were
again chosen to give roughly equal numbers of Scots and non-Scots.
The interviews varied in length, but were generally around 75
minutes. Nearly all interviews were recorded and subsequently fully

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 Problematising national identity

transcribed; two respondents refused to be tape-recorded and the

information is in note form. Some material was collected in a rela-
tively structured way in all or most of the interviews and has been
coded for analysis by SPSS. The transcript material has been
analysed using Hypersoft, a computer program which aids qualita-
tive analysis.
During the interviews, the Anglicisation issue was raised, often as
it had been covered by the media in Scotland, but employed for our
purposes as a device to tap the perceptions of Scots and non-Scots.
Of particular interest here were the processes through which our
respondents claimed national identities for themselves and attrib-
uted them to others. We asked our respondents about their national
identity, using the Moreno question in a formal way among the arts
group and rather more circuitously among the landed group. This
was because we found that asking the question in a stmctured form
and then proffering the card caused some resistance in the landed
group, probably because they were less used to being asked such
questions. With this group, the interviewer established the respon-
dent's primary identification and then would probe to see whether
they felt for instance more Scottish than British, equally Scottish
and British and so on. If we intended to analyse these responses for-
mally, as in a survey, this procedure would clearly present difficul-
ties. However, the whole purpose of the exercise was to develop a
much more detailed, and refined account of the national identity of
our respondents and, above all, why they said what they did. It is
precisely the tension between the straightforward identification of
identity in the Moreno sense and the meanings articulated which is
of importance. Furthermore, because the interviews were semi-
structured, people touched on topics which relate to our concems
here in many parts of the interview and we have drawn on this mate-
rial regardless of where it occurred but with due regard to context.
We have followed the usual procedures when using computer
analysis of text of repeated reading, tagging of sections and phrases,
putting together extracts which seem to illustrate a particular issue,
and so on. What is in our view crucial is that we have examined the
excerpts quoted collectively and satisfied ourselves that we agree on
the interpretation and that, in so far as one can tell by consideration
of context, we are not doing the respondent an injustice. Our confi-
dence in our interpretation of the data is further increased, because
whenever the material seemed to be pointing in a particular direc-
tion, we have systematically searched for and tried to accommodate
in the account counter examples, be they people who one would

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David McCrone, Robert Stewart, Richard Kiely and Frank Bechhofer

have expected from the analysis to have expressed a similar view to

a group of respondents, but who do not, or those who one might
have expected to disagree but do not.

Analysis
Let us, then, explore how our respondents in the arts and landed
elites use the criteria of birth, residence and ancestry to make sense
of their own national identity and those of others. We should bear
in mind that we would not expect their views to refiect those of the
population at large, given the particular salience of identity issues
which we referred to earlier. The two groups will be treated sepa-
rately given the greater likely significance of ancestry (via inheri-
tance) among the landed elite. The point too is to see how the three
dimensions we are interested in - birth, residence and ancestry - are
handled in the processes of negotiating identity among and between
the two groups.

(i) Arts managers

Let us begin with the arts elite. This is a group whose positional
claims are made on the basis of occupational competence and
expertise. We find debate taking place largely along the 'living in
Scotland' dimension. For the arts managers the arena in which the
game is played out is very much Scotland. In their daily social inter-
action and work, the identity of those living outwith Scotland is not
especially salient if, as we shall see from our data below, sometimes
an irritant. What is crucial for them is the identity they claim and
the identities they accept among their peers operating in the context
of Scottish culture in Scotland. On the other hand, the landed elite,
many of whom are resident outwith Scotland, and whose class
interests define the arena more widely behave quite differently.

(a) Negotiating birth

Here, for example, is one arts manager who makes a strong case for
being Scottish even though he is not bom in Scotland. He makes a
distinction between what he calls the Ancient Scots (who we can
perhaps infer are people who can mobilise Scottish natality, ances-
try and residence) and Anglo-Scots (people who can mobilise
Scottish ancestry and residence but in this case were bom in
England).

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 Problematising national identity

Even though I could absolutely defend my Scottish lineage and

my middle names were [Scottish] and all the rest of it, neverthe-
less there is within Scotland a certain quite justifiable inbuilt
suspicion between the perhaps the Ancient Scots and the Anglo-
Scots. However, if one really looks at that carefully the defini-
tions begin to crumble, because you see that Scots came from
everywhere and have gone everywhere and . . . a deep culture like
we have in Scotland absolutely depends on not being a closed
order like Japan was where they all ended up looking the same
and sounding the same. In Scotland there is this richness because
Scotland has sent its people, willingly or unwillingly all over the
world, but also Scotland has brought people in. In Scotland you
had the Romans, you had the Danes and all the rest of it, it's
been an invaded place, but it's been a very sort of mixed, always
has been mixed, so I don't think that one can, I don't think the
argument stands up for the sort of for absolute Scottishness.

We can see that he tried to show that 'Anglo-Scots' (like him) are
just as Scottish as 'ancient' Scots. In essence, this is a debate about
whether place of birth matters. He is intent on (a) stressing the
importance of ancestry (hence the first sentence 'I could absolutely
defend my Scottish lineage and my middle names were Scottish and
all the rest of it'), and (b) showing that birth is irrelevant because of
the historic value of ethnic mixing ('Romans', 'Danes', 'it's been an
invaded place, but it's been a very sort of mixed, always has been
mixed'; and the supposed (and pejorative) contrast with Japan). In
sum, he accepts the distinction between 'ancient' Scots and 'Anglo-
Scots', and then argues that demographic openness ('Scots came
from everywhere and have gone everywhere') has helped to enrich
the culture.
Just how birth, residence and ancestry are used as negotiating ele-
ments in claiming and accepting identity can be seen in the response
of a second respondent, who is here referring to a neighbour not
bom in Scotland.

There is a guy, a potter on the west side of {the island]. They are
both English they are both from Yorkshire. Their son was bom in
X, and I stopped by during the European cup when Sweden were
playing England and like all true Scots their kid was there
cheering on the Swedish. He obviously didn't see himself as
English. Genetically he is as English as they come. It is a very
tough question, it's really hard for me to say. It is drawing

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David McCrone, Robert Stewart, Richard Kiely and Frank Bechhofer

barriers and definitions and again this huge soup of races, across
barriers which has been happening over the centuries and saying
this is definitely this and this definitely that.

This respondent is ambivalent about acknowledging the son as

Scottish ('genetically he is as English as they come') even though he
was bom and lives in Scotland, but lacks ancestry, which, more gen-
erally, is to be applauded ('this huge soup of races').

(b) Mobilising ancestry

This sort of comment that ancestry matters, however residually, is
fairly unusual among the arts elite, although it does surface with
regard to Irish ancestry. This is an interesting aspect which connects
with an older but still extant debate about being Scottish/Irish,
Protestant/Catholic in some parts of Scotland. We get a flavour
from two respondents who lack the criterion of ancestry.

I mean I am British. I'm also Scots, and I'm also half-Irish which
complicates the matter for me! Because I'm from Irish Scotland,
from the West Coast, from Catholic upbringing and all that sort
of thing. My mother's Irish so it's more complicated for me really
I've never felt part of- there's a particular kind of Scotland that
I've never really felt part of, which is the Clan Scotland.

and another,

I often feel a sense of identity with other Irish Scots. I mean in a

very tribally segregated wee country like this I always feel, despite
myself, a certain identity, a certain sympathy with people from
broadly similar backgrounds.

These comments from different respondents alert us to the fact

that identity has to do with claims rather than fixed descriptions to
be read off demographic characteristics. The first respondent
chooses to refer to himself as 'half-Irish' on the grounds that his
mother was Irish (he would, of course, also have had the option of
claiming Scottish ancestry on his father's side and referred to him-
self as half-Scottish if he had so wanted). Both respondents use
hyphenate forms ('Irish Scotland', and 'Irish Scots') to make the
point that ancestry matters and, for these respondents, is made to
matter.

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 Problematising national identity

(c) Qualifying by residence

Let us pursue the issue of living in Scotland a bit more, as it helps
us to get some purchase on matters of birth and ancestry. Here is
one such identity claim: 'I came from the South, but I was bom
here, my father worked here for twenty years, I've lived here since
the '50s, and so I am in fact half-Scots.' This respondent (let us call
him X) was bom, and is living in Scotland, but has - we are led to
believe - a non-Scots father. The signals he gives off, however, espe-
cially accent, confuse other arts managers. One made this judge-
ment about him: 'I mean X is almost a Scot, he's a Scottish
background and a Scottish family, and I can't remember whether he
was bom up here or not but I think he really more or less counts as
Scottish.' In other words, the signals X gives off are ambiguous
(birth, in itself, cannot be identified from visible markets). It is pos-
sible that because X was brought up in England, has an English
accent and for a variety of reasons we don't know about, he either
doesn't wish to or finds it difficult to claim to be Scottish. The
observer's 'almost Scottish' account of X's identity may be due to
either a recognition of X's ambiguous sense of identity or having
heard X providing such an account. For his part, X referred to him-
self at another stage in the interview as 'half Scots and half English',
which may mean that he finds it useful to have a foot in both camps.
For respondents living in Scotland who were not bom here the
ability to claim Scottish ancestry helps to offset perceived
Englishness. Thus,

I think having a Scots grandfather - my name is Scots, and all of

that. I mean there's a pretty strong Scottish infiuence in my
family background anyway, so I'm certainly part-Scot by genetics.
I guess that does have a part.

and another respondent.

My mother's family is Scots. Indeed, part of my father's mother's

family were Scots, so three out of my four grandparents were
Scots... I had visited Scotland as a child every year so had very
happy memories and close ties with the country Although I
wasn't bom a Scot or brought up as a Scot I had it very much in
the background. I wasn't bom, brought up or educated here.
Even some of my Scots ancestors, I think, though born here, were
educated elsewhere and probably spent a lot of their careers

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David McCrone, Robert Stewart, Richard Kiely and Frank Bechhofer

outside Scotland. But it's something that - you know, it's cer-
tainly something I'm very aware of.

This capacity to claim and mobilise Scottish ancestry proves useful

to this arts manager and others who feel they need to explain that
they are not perhaps as essentially 'English' as might be read off
from their accent or birth.
The individuals most vulnerable to accusations of anglicisation
are those who are living and working in Scotland but who cannot
make claim to Scottish birth or ancestry. Here are some examples of
how this is expressed.

I suppose that I am by birth English but I don't sort of think of

myself in that way. I suppose to be honest, if I am anything, I am
a European/adopted Scot is how I think of myself If you saw me
in a debating chamber in London, which is frequently where I
am, then I am actually usually sort offightingthe Scottish comer.
So I would say I am sort of Scottish by adoption and by thinking.

This respondent alludes to being 'European' and an 'adopted' Scot

(implying that he is accepted as such), who can be trusted to fight
'the Scottish comer'. What matters to him is achievement not
ascription. Another alludes directly to her 'affinity' and 'loyalty':

I've been told that I'm an honorary Scot! I think I have acquired
an affinity with what it is like to be Scots. I don't think I could
ever feel Scots to the real extent, as soon as I open my mouth I
am identified as not being Scots, and for some people that's it. I
doesn't matter what I've done, how long I've been here, and I find
that very frustrating, I must say, and quite upsetting really,
because all my affinity, all my loyalties, all my feelings are about
Scotland. I regard Scotland as my home very much. So I think as
far as some politically ardent Scots, one could never do that and I
have some understanding of that, but I think that there has to be
an allowance for the honorary Scot.

Note the way the claim is made. First of all, honorary Scottishness
has been conferred by others ('I've been told that . . . ' ) ; secondly,
there is a tentative claim ('I think I have acquired an affinity with
what it is like to be [Scots]'); thirdly, she is upset and frustrated
when her claim is not acknowledged ('It doesn't matter what I've
done, how long I've been here, and I find that very frustrating, I

642 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998

 Problematising national identity

must say, and quite upsetting really . . . ' ) ; fourthly, she uses the
ambiguity of 'home' - where you (want to) stay not simply where
you come from. To make the point with force, she then mobilises
residence and ancestry by proxy in the form of her partner and chil-
dren:

I mean I've lived here now for ten years, I'm married to a
Scotsman, I've had a Scottish child as my husband tells me! And,
you know, his family live up here and I still find it - 1 mean I love
the country desperately but I will know that I will never be a
Scots person, I will always be regarded as an English person
living in Scotland.

This kind of appeal is helped by other arts managers who are

Scottish in terms of birth, ancestry and residence, and who take a
more catholic view of nationality as follows:

There are so many different Scots. I mean when you say 'Scottish
not British', do you mean Asian Scottish, do you mean Chinese
Scottish? There are so many variations on that, and I think one
that you could have is 'English Scottish'. There are a lot of people
who are English by birth but who live and identify and have roots
here in Scotland. They shouldn't be excluded from a feeling of
patriotism, a feeling of pride.

Again (this time from one of the respondents who identified himself
as 'half-Irish'):

I think there are many - I'm not about to define what a Scots
person is, because we all know there are Polish-Scots, Pakistani-
Scots, Chinese-Scots, Irish-Scots, EngUsh-Scots, all kinds. So, you
know, it's this whole thing about what is a nation and all that
kind of stuff.

Finally, it is possible to discredit birth as a marker - reduce it to an

'accident of birth', as it were. One way of doing this is to make the
claim on the grounds that being Scottish by birth or by ancestry but
living elsewhere has its negative aspects:

I mean the best definition of a Scot is I suppose someone who

was born here or someone who lives here. And occasionally I sort
of bristle and feel well, particularly when you hear Scots in

© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 643

David Me Crone, Robert Stewart, Richard Kiely and Frank Bechhofer

London bleating, you think well they're in London, they're

disqualified now. If they really want to put something into
Scotland they should be in Scotland.

And again from the same respondent.

One of the hardest things you have to fight in terms of getting

Scottish things on (the UK Television Network) from Scotland,
are some of the Scots who are in London who think because
Scotland's in their past, they're not interested, they don't want to
give any space to that.

The respondent we cited earlier who spoke of her fmstration and

upset at not being accepted as a Scot on grounds of her birth com-
mented:

It's interesting to know when you become validly Scots or

accepted as a Scot. For example, I mean I know some people who
are very senior in the arts, who were bom here, who went away
and worked elsewhere and came back, and I know that they're
not real Scots because they went away.

and again.

It isn't helped by people bailing out and having the attitude that
people who exist in Scotland, live and work in Scotland are
second best, which is inherent.... everything I was battling
against, which was to establish parity with London, or at least get
halfway there, was knocked on the head by Scots.

What these respondents are doing is making their claim to some

form of Scottishness on the grounds of commitment and choice, as
opposed to birth. In essence, this strategy is to reduce birth to a
matter of accident or non-choice in favour of a definition in terms
of commitment and choice. Living and working, in other words, are
more significant criteria than birth or ancestry over which one has
no control.

(ii) Landed elite

How do these devices work for our second group, the landed elite?
The most obvious difference is that a number of landowners will

644 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998

 Problematising national identity

have inherited their land, and we would expect as a result that

ancestry would be more prominent in their accounts of
Scottishness. Here are some selected accounts from landowners who
are Scottish by birth, ancestry and residence.

I myself have certainly a good bit of Norse in me. Macleod son of

Leod, son of Man, and dare say I have got quite a bit of Spanish.
I'm sure from these Spanish chaps who were dumped here when
the Armada sank. And Celt and probably a few other bits and
pieces. So who's to say who is a foreigner and who is not? How
many real natives are there in this country? I'm a Scotsman living
here and I enjoy it. I haven't a clue if people think I'm an incomer
or not.

Here we find use of similar 'inclusive' mechanisms for defining Scots

as we found among arts managers who were Scots by birth, ances-
try and residence. Problematising 'real natives' and 'foreigner' is a
way of disputing the terms of the debate. This extract also makes
plain another added dimension in the landed elite, namely, the issue
of 'incomer'. Given the fixed and localised nature of land,
incomer/outsider can apply not simply to national but also local
identity.

(a) Land and ancestry

A further element among the landed elite is the appeal to historic
levels of ancestry, especially if these are expressed in terms of aristo-
cratic ancestry as these following respondents do.

I can see what you're getting at but let's tum it round by saying
that if I were living in Sussex with a Scots mum and an English
dad, what would I be? What would I be? I think I would be - 1
think strictly speaking and in terms of blood and genealogy -
British. I mean my wife always says, you know, 'I am purely
Scottish', and she is. There is no drop of English blood, unless
anybody can find way back. So she is Scots.

The second respondent conveys how complex the markers of iden-

tity can be:

And they say, 'Oh yes, but you went to Eton and Oxford or
Cambridge.' I say well that shows your ignorance. I've never been
to an English school, rather a Scottish one. I've never been to an

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David McCrone, Robert Stewart, Richard Kiely and Frank Bechhofer

English university, I served for six years in a Highland regiment, I

went to university in Canada in fact, and apart from having the
post I had down in London I have no interests in England
whatsoever. 'Oh but you speak like an Englishman', and I said no
I don't speak like an Englishman. I happen to have spent most of
my youth on the Continent because of the War, and I've divided
my life between North America and Europe and I speak what
used to be called a BBC English or the Queen's English, nothing
to do with education at a l l . . . I'm also blessed to have a wife who
is 100% Scot and was bom just over the hill.

Landowners such as this one are able to mobilise very ancient pedi-
grees to make the point that their claim does not rest on where they
themselves were bom. Indeed, being Scottish or English may rest on
the origins of the family name, as for this respondent:

Well I mostly see myself as Scottish but it's sad to say I'm Enghsh,
because X [sumame] is nae Scottish. I know where my ancestors
came from, my ancestors were English. That's going back a few
generations ago. But I don't like to think of myself as anything else
than Scottish now. Aye, it means a lot to me, to be Scottish.

Another respondent, a Scot by birth and residence but not ancestry,

told the story of a neighbour to reinforce the point.

Then we was talking to Y and funnily enough his relations are

English. So he said to me jokingly he said, 'My ancestors were
English', he spoke in his broad Aberdonian accent, I said, 'By
heck, that was a long time ago', he says 'Oh aye, 1481'. And he
can go back to 1481. And then one night we broke down in the
pickup and a chap stopped to give us a tow and we got talking
and we said 'What's your name', and he said 'Z' and I said 'No
relation to Y' and he said 'Yes he's my uncle', and it was his
relation, and I said 'But you're English' and he said, 'Yes, we
came up here' and he was related to him - but 1481 he goes back,
so I think it will be a long time before anyone considers us locals.

Playing the Scottish card for many landowners often means using
history to make the point. When the land has been in the family for
generations, and when even Scottish kings can be worked into the
ancestry, then birth and residence (complicated by the fact that
some will have estates in England as well as Scotland) pale into

646 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998

 Problematising national identity

insignificance. Here is a comment from someone who was not bom

in Scotland, but who uses the ancestry claim.

You may, therefore, find it hard to take on board the fact that I
consider myself to be very much a Scot and very much a Borderer
. . . S [his sumame], I mean, that's not a very Scottish name. You
know, I mean and when you tell them that we've actually been in
Scotland ever since the 10th Century, or whatever, they're really
rather amazed . . . And I do rise, I do get drawn into arguments
quite a lot, particularly by some of my Highland friends . .. You
know, one is drawn very much into conversations which are
actually utterly ridiculous, by saying things like 'Well we had a
really tough time of it in the 1300s,' and I mean how the hell do I
know what kind of time we had in the 1300s, it's ridiculous. It's
not as if there's scars all over my body to prove it. But it's crazy.
But it's all part of the whole story and, you know, it's just the fact
that for some extraordinary reason, do not ask me why, my
family have stayed in the same place, which is very unusual, for a
very long time and have written everything down, so we have all
these astonishing records.

What landowners such as this are able to do is mobilise a consider-

able family history to claim Scottish credentials, especially where
other markers such as accent and education are discordant. Here,
for instance, is an absentee Highland laird making the point about
his family holdings in both Aberdeenshire and the West Highlands.

My grandmother was an X [West Highland name] and my

father's family all came from Aberdeenshire and they still live in
Aberdeenshire. But being a younger son, like many of us, he had
to come down and earn his pennies in England, like so many
people. It's the pattem which we all know.
[We were] (v)ery big landowners historically in Aberdeenshire,
most of the Don Valley at one point in time . . . and the estates
are still mnning. But it was never mine or my father's so I'm three
generations removed from it, which always amuses me very much
because, in the West Highlands, one is still rather looked upon by
the locals as being a sort of English - 1 do actually point out to
them that one is a good deal more Scots than most of them.

We see here too how identity is strongly localised (in this case in two
areas) and affirmed through the local land, and hence with the
national 'Land'.

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David McCrone, Robert Stewart, Richard Kiely and Frank Bechhofer

(b) Altematives to ancestry

What, however, of those who cannot make the ancestry claim? They
have recourse to similar devices as we found among the arts man-
agers, namely reducing birth to an 'accident', as well as stressing
commitment and competence as landowners and farmers.

Coming back to your original question of 'do we feel ourselves

local?', yeah I would like to think we did. I believe that you sort
of move to an area and you're living in an area, you want to
believe that you're part of that area and part of the community.
This idea of you're English because your mum and dad decided
to have you bom in England, I mean it doesn't wash as far as I'm
concemed. I believe to go as far as to say well I'm Scottish, that
might be a - 1 think we should be classed as Scots. You know, if
you're living in Scotland I think that's what it really boils down
to, because you've made your own decision what you want to be,
you want to be part of that community, then I can't see really why
you shouldn't be - likewise, if I was in England and a Scottish
chap came and lived next-door and he wanted to join in and be
one of us, I can't see why he can't be English really.

The respondent recognises that he is involved in making a claim

which has to be handled sensitively and tentatively.

Interviewer: Do you see yourself as Scottish now then?

Respondent: Well I personally do, yeah. But as I say, I wouldn't
want to go round and say to somebody, 'I'm Scottish.' You know,
I've been asked 'Are you Scottish?', I've been asked that. Alright,
with my accent if people are talking they would know I wasn't
Scottish but I think well I wasn't bom in Scotland but I do
choose to live here and I would like to be classed and thought of
as Scottish. I mean it's a nice place and at my age I can make my
own decisions and this is where I feel I really want to belong and
I think I should be able to class myself as Scottish then.
Interviewer: If I was to ask you if you saw yourself now as
Scottish, English or British, which one would you say?
Respondent: I'd have to go for British I suppose, really, you know
to be fair to everybody, because British would cover the British
Isles, wouldn't i t . . . It seems obvious to me that you're British
because you're bom in the British Isles. I suppose really if you
went down the line in the conventional way you'd have to say you

648 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998

 Problematising national identity

were English, and thirdly you might sort of say well okay I've
lived in Scotland, I'll class myself Scottish. But I would like to
think I would put Scottish as second, really.
Interviewer: Whereas you wouldn't have done that before?
Respondent: No. But as I s a y , . . . to a Scotsman - that might be a
different kettle offish.

In these later comments, he is aware that he is making a contentious

claim. He describes himself as 'British' as a form of inclusive iden-
tity, as a way of distancing himself from being thought of as
English. We can see a similar strategy being adopted by another
respondent.

Respondent: When I'm filling in a form I always put in 'British', I

don't put 'English' or 'Scottish'. Somebody was filling in a form
the other week for me and they put nationality 'English' and I
said, 'No I'm not, I'm British.'
Interviewer: I mean for you, what's the difference I suppose
between the two?
Respondent: Well I'm not Scottish or English, am I? I'm British.
It becomes difficult at times because I'm not Scottish and I never
will be, but I'm proud to live here.

We see then that ancestry is used more extensively by the landed

elite reflecting in large part the fact that land is a heritable commod-
ity whereas arts management is a matter of occupational skill and
expertise. Those landowners who cannot call on their ancestry to
legitimate their claim have recourse to other means such as compe-
tence and commitment as land managers.

Conclusion

This paper set out to explore how national identity is understood

and mobilised. In Scotland most people who define themselves as
Scots treat being Scottish, and regarding themselves or others as
Scottish as generally unproblematic and that is no surprise in the
light of the relatively peaceful nature of identity politics here.
Surveys show that Scottish identity has to a considerable extent
taken over from British identity but the uniformity of survey results
and the relatively unproblematic notion of being a Scot are based to
a considerable extent on each person's 'taken-for-granted' criteria

© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 649

David McCrone, Robert Stewart, Richard Kiely and Frank Bechhofer

for defining someone as a Scot, and the also 'taken-for-granted'

assumption that others will use the same criteria in the same way as
oneself These assumptions are rarely challenged in general dis-
course in Scotland. Social interaction is able to mn along smoothly
among those living here not only because of these 'taken-for-
granted' criteria and assumptions, but also because of the natural
tendency to assume that people encountered are resident in
Scotland unless there are cues to the contrary, and because birth
and ancestry cannot easily be 'read off' without specific enquiry.
This is why accent becomes an important 'marker' which occasion-
ally can disrupt the easy flow of social interaction. This can happen
in two contrasting ways. Those who regard themselves as Scots by
virtue of some combination of birth, ancestry or residence but who,
as a result of education or socialisation, may be thought to have a
non-Scottish accent, are occasionally irritated by those who do not
immediately attribute Scottishness to them. We gave an example of
this process earlier. On the other hand, those who accept that they
may not be seen as Scots despite residence and commitment may
occasionally be annoyed by those who assume they are not resident
in Scotland. This is nicely expressed by one arts manager who com-
mented: 'If you were living in London and every time you got in a
taxi he said "Oh you're just visiting are you?" Would you begin to
feel rather offended if you had lived there for fifteen years, because
that's what I get in Glasgow - "Just here for the day? No, I bloody
well live here, I run one of your bloody Arts Centres."' Generally,
however, most people believe that they know whether or not they
are a Scot and their choice goes unchallenged, just as they do not
challenge the choices of others. This entire process rests on the easy
and peaceful co-existence of quite different assumptions about the
criteria for national identity. This paper enables us to understand
better these differing assumptions and how varied is the meaning of
Scottish identity.
It is important to realise that we have been able to do this by
selecting two groups, arts managers and landowners, who, unlike
the population at large, have good reason to be sensitive to the
problematic nature of national identity. Both arts and land in
Scotland are areas where public controversy has taken place as to
who are fit and proper people to run Scottish culture and land.
Hence, they go about constructing and mobilising national identi-
ties in what has become a charged political and cultural context.
For them, it is a question of legitimating their control or ownership
of key assets, in these cases, arts and land. The raw materials of

650 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998

 Problematising national identity

national identity - birth, residence, ancestry - which for most

people in Scotland are quite unproblematic, for members of the two
elite groups require to be spun in such a way as to support their
case.
These varying understandings of national identity are sustained
by and in social interaction in the course of which various 'identity
claims' are made and received in various ways. Such claims and
their reception may vary according to the context. We discuss the
theoretical underpinnings of our approach to national identity in a
separate paper, 'The Nature of National Identity' (forthcoming). A
person's national identity, as presented to others, is not only socially
constmcted but sensitive to context.
University of Edinburgh Received 6 March 1998
Accepted 6 May 1998

Notes
1 This paper like all those arising from this project is the product of a collegiate form
of working in which the fieldwork, the analysis and the drafts of the papers have
been discussed by the entire research team throughout. The first named author has
been responsible for initially drafting the paper and seeing it into print; the names
of the other authors are in random order. The project was conceived and designed
by the principal investigators Frank Bechhofer and David McCrone, and funded
by a grant (R 000234675) from the Economic and Social Research Council. The
interviews were largely carried out by Richard Kiely and Robert Stewart. Gary
West worked on the project for nine months, and did some of the early interviews
with the landed elite before he left to take up a lectureship and we gratefully
acknowledge his contribution. The interviews were transcribed by the project sec-
retary. Sue Mawdsley, who in this and many other ways contributed greatly to the
research.
2 In the Scottish Election Study 1992, respondents were asked: 'Do you consider
yourself to be British, Scottish, Irish, Welsh or something else?'
3 The British Election Study of 1997 asked: 'Please say which, if any, of the words on
this card describes the way you think of yourself. Please choose as many or as few
as apply. British/English/European/Irish/Northem Irish/ScottishAVelsh/other/'
4 These have become known as the Moreno question after the political scientist Luis
Moreno who first asked it in an opinion poll for the Glasgow Herald newspaper in
1986. In the British Election Study of 1997, variants were asked in England, Wales
and Scotland. The Scottish question was as follows: 'Which, if any, of the follow-
ing best describes how you see yourself? Scottish not British/More Scottish than
British/Equally Scottish and British/More British than Scottish/British not
Scottish/other'.
5 We are currently carrying out research on national and local identity in Berwick-
upon-Tweed where we are most likely to find such ambiguity on the British main-
land.

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David McCrone, Robert Stewart, Richard Kiely and Frank Bechhofer

6 The question in 1997 asked: 'Would you say that you had more in common with
(same class) English people or with (opposite class) Scottish people?' A furthei
13% said they had 'no preference', 11% that 'it depends on the individual', and 4%
did not know or had no answer.
7 Defined most commonly in terms of having at least one parent or grandparent
bom in Scotland.

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