Premium
Whither Britishness? English and Scottish people in Scotland * 1
Author(s) -
Kiely Richard,
McCrone David,
Bechhofer Frank
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
nations and nationalism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.655
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1469-8129
pISSN - 1354-5078
DOI - 10.1111/j.1354-5078.2005.00192.x
Subject(s) - britishness , scots , national identity , meaning (existential) , identity (music) , construct (python library) , sociology , context (archaeology) , gender studies , political science , law , history , politics , aesthetics , linguistics , epistemology , philosophy , archaeology , computer science , programming language
. National identity, and especially what being British means, appears to have become more problematic in recent years. Our research on national identity over the last decade suggests that people regularly construct Britishness in quite diverse ways. This article focuses on ‘territorial’ identity and points to the limits of conventional survey work on national identity. It also explores how different conceptions of Britishness are developing within Scotland and England. Differences also emerge within the group of Scots‐born nationals, as well as English‐born migrants in Scotland, as the latter come to reassess how they construct Britishness, given the new context in which they find themselves. To assume one uniform, explicit meaning of Britishness is, in short, highly problematic.