Sorry for the delay with this post. I meant to finish and upload it at the weekend when it was still relatively new news, but doing real life things got in the way - in a good way. Still, the situation re Scottish independence has hardly become 'old news' since last Tuesday, so here are my thoughts from then.
The figure of Alex Salmond silhouetted against the Scottish flag was splashed across the cover of the Guardian this morning, together with the announcement that Messieurs Cameron and Salmond have signed an agreement to hold a referendum on Scottish independence by the end of 2014. The news even made it to page 5 in the Metro, but was narrowly beaten by a parrot which, after going missing for 5 days, knocked on a house door for help.
The Guardian's article is suitably unbiased. By comparison, unsurprisingly, the Daily Mail is pro-Union, arguing that Cameron has 'lost' to Salmond by agreeing to a referendum, but that a Scotland independent of London wouldn't be able to support itself economically. Meanwhile, the Sun is concerned about the far more pressing issue that an independent Scotland would mean we would lose Andy Murray.
I realise that it isn't a newspaper's place to hypothesise on the nature of things in mainstream news articles. Comment columns have become the established home of intellectual debate - if anywhere at all. And the sort of noncommittal middling line taken by the Guardian is what rings truest for me. However, I'm always disappointed that we're made to take abstract concepts - concepts such as nation, and national identity - for granted. You shouldn't have to have to have a degree in social anthropology to engage in the meta-debate: what actually is Scotland, and what validity does it have?
I'm neither for nor against an independent Scotland. We could call all land North of the M25 the Duchy of Little Warsaw, and it wouldn't make a difference to me so long as no one tried to kill me for my race, language, customs, or beliefs. But that's kind of the point: these markers of identity, which so often formed the basis for national separatism and difference in the 19th and early 20th centuries, shouldn't matter in the 21st century, the era of inclusivity and political correctness. Or perhaps calls for Scottish independence are symptomatic of a failure to make inclusivity not just acceptable, but a positive thing.
When I was discussing this blogpost with someone, they said to me 'ah yes, but national sentiment runs deep'. And it's true. Identity isn't just about what language you speak, or your customs. It's about the whole bag of socio-cultural stuff - stories we tell, landmarks in time and place, popular delusions - which contributes to our self-understanding, our self-coordination in society. Scotland doesn't exist as such - no more than Father Christmas: a myth we keep alive - but in this way it is as living and breathing as the sum total of its inhabitants.
But perhaps what I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't let ourselves be swept away by our own attempts at self-coordination. Let's look at the bigger picture: Scotland is as man-made as any country, and as mortal as the Roman Empire. So, as far as political independence is concerned, a little pragmatism wouldn't go amiss, so we can do what works best for all. And if this means establishing the Duchy of Little Warsaw, then na zdrowie!
Ah but, the Thomas theorum speaks against the idea that there is 'real' and 'imaginary'; as Jenkins glosses (2005 I think): just because something is imagined, does not mean it is imaginary. What is human existence but our imagined notions, interpretations, discourses, categorizations and representations of ourselves, others and the material world. Cultural stuff is real BECAUSE it is imagined, not in spite of it. That said, 'groupness' appears at the point of boundaries, often quite irrespective of the 'cultural stuff' within it (Barthes 1969), and thus, as you point out, it shouldn't matter in the context of modern society, group and ethnicity theory highlighting that it is only in the context in which differences become important that boundaries become conflict. The problem of the utilitarian solution, what works best for the greatest number is that alas, a means-ends calculation requires a set of real goods, real values and real 'good'. In the slippery world of identity and the human world however, identity, forms of capital, meaning, values and what-is-good, slip in and out of reality, called into being in the context of importance, fixed only in that moment, and then re-enter the messy world of the social life of things (Appadurai). What we need is a means-ends calculation which works on fluids, unfixed imaginings and virtualities. Still, perhaps that's not a pragmatic solution.
ReplyDeleteYour face isn't a pragmatic solution! I feel like Jenkins's imagined/imaginary distinction is a little too reconstructive, as if he's trying to bring 'reality' back from the mid-20th century nihilistic void. Otherwise, fair enough. I feel that THAT, however, is precisely not what to say to make people question nation/nationality in a fluffle sort of way.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. The problem with the 'social construction as reality' standpoint is that in that the realist and positivist ideology of a society so committed to the *idea* that we are "secular", "scientific" and "rational" (all ideologies, I would add), the idea of the 'real' and the 'imaginary' is much more strongly imagined than the idea that 'the imagined is not imaginary' idea, and thus the idea of the 'real' is much more real, in reality, in that it has real impacts on people's lives and on how they experience and live out their lives. Brubaker's way round this rather issue that the majority of the population essentially live in a different imagined reality to that which social theory says they ought to, is to use the analytical distiction of organsiations which claims to speak for the 'group' and 'groupness' and individuals. Thus Brubaker manages to retain a sound and convincing model of group and culture as imagined community which is meaningful, while simultaneously arguing that 'ethnicity without groups' is possible, thus moving the debate to a question of power, domination, mobilisation and creation of group difference by powerful instiutions for political aimss. Ish. That is a fiarly poor summary tbh. But Brubaker's article is magin, truly a beautiful thing:
ReplyDeleteRogers Brubaker. "Ethnicity Without Groups" Archives Européennes de Sociologie XLIII.2 (2002): 163-18
*'magic'
ReplyDelete