David Mccrone
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 91152 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | David Mccrone |
| NOMBRES | David |
| APELLIDO | Mccrone |
| FIRMA | MCCRONE D |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Edinburgh |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 147 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 784 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 144 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 3 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1975 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 15 |
Roots and Routes
It is a puzzle for many of us sociologists that we have forgotten who we came from.We used to have it dinned into us that Marx, Weber and Durkheim were the 'founding fathers' of the discipline, the creators of classical social theory which underpinned sociology.Other theorists crowded in, usually dead white men, and one suspects that many gave it up as a bad job, allowing students to make it up as they went along without worrying overmuch about w…
‘We, the People’ Understanding Populism in the Twenty-first Century
This article explores the concept and practice of ‘populism’ which has taken on new and virulent forms in the early twenty-first century. With ancient roots in political theory and practice, modern populism is in essence a morality tale, partitioning society and politics into ‘people’ versus ‘elites’. Academic writing on populism, however, takes the people/elites distinction for granted, and fails to provide adequate analysis of populism’s social…
What Do We Think of it So Far? Twenty-Five Years of Devolution
This article reviews twenty-five years of devolution in Scotland with regard to public opinion surveys conducted by the Scottish Centre for Social Research, and funded by Scottish Government. It shows that, despite changes in political party control of Scottish and of British governments, there is consistently higher support for the former over the latter in terms of public trust, capacity to listen, and having a say in how Scotland is governed. …
The post-modern condition of Scottish society
This paper was originally published in The Future of the Kirk: The proceedings of the conference held at the University of Aberdeen on 16 September 1996, ed. D. A. S. Fergusson and D. W. D. Shaw; Theology in Scotland Occasional Paper no. 2 (St Andrews: St Mary’s College, 1997), 11–20. The paper examines (1) what we mean by the term 'post-modern' and how we should interpret it and the major changes which are such a feature of the world we live in;…
The owl of Minerva takes fright
This paper presents a sociological analysis of the ways in which Scotland has been transformed over the last 25 years. It takes as its starting point the talk the author gave in 1996 entitled “The Post-Modern Condition of Scottish Society”, setting out how Scotland has changed in the intervening years. It sketches out and reflects on the defining events of the period: devolution and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament; the rise to power …
East Windy, West Endy
The Owl of Minerva Takes Fright
This article, based on a talk given in November 2023, seeks to place contemporary Scotland in the context of broader social and political change. The last quarter of a century, marked by a devolved Parliament, has also seen the rise of increasingly aggressive individualism, a retreat from the social, and a populist right which threatens a crisis for democracy globally. Where, and how, does Scotland stand in these contexts
What about Us?’ The Rise and Rise of English Nationalism
Much has been made of the rise of English nationalism, reflected in the strong association of ‘being English’ and voting Leave in the Brexit referendum in 2016. This article examines recent books on Englishness, arguing that this is a complex and nuanced matter embedded in accreted myths. If there is a thoroughgoing ‘nationalism’ emerging in England, it requires not only significant and long-lasting shifts in national identity, but a conception o…
Gianfranco Poggi (1934–2023)
Gianfranco Poggi (1934–2023) was amongst the initial staff cohort at the formation of the University of Edinburgh’s Department of Sociology in 1964. Poggi’s recent death brought to an end almost six decades of thinking, arguing, and writing about Sociology: much of that time was spent in Scotland. Here Scottish Affairs marks his passing through short memorials to him from his former student and colleague, David McCrone; and from his daughter, Mar…
In Memoriam. Tom Nairn
This obituary situates Tom Nairn (1932–2023) as a ‘Man With Qualities’, exploring his writing and thinking, not least through his critique of the British state
The Rise and Rise of English Nationalism
This article reviews myths about English identity, using ‘myth’ in a social scientific way, a truth held to be self‐evident; not something which is patently untrue. It argues that there must be three defining dimensions of English ‘nationalism’ if it is to be treated as such: first, whether there has been a significant increase in the proportion of people claiming ‘English’ as their national identity; second, how ‘England’ is treated as an ‘imagi…
Tom Nairn
Who Runs Edinburgh?
A global city by repute, Edinburgh’s power structure is largely opaque. This book sets out to tell its modern story and to unveil as far as possible who runs this place. It examines its politics, formal and informal; its changing political economy; and the rise and rise of its status as Festival city. Behind all this lies a complex system of money and culture, of presumed social status tied into a hierarchy of schools and institutions, universiti…
Who Runs Edinburgh?
The Question of the vis-à-vis
The essence of identity is ‘othering’. Who we are not matters as much as who we take ourselves to be. Identities – including those of nation, class, gender and ‘race’ – do not stand alone, but are to be understood in the context of the vis-à-vis. The upsurge in ‘being English’, for example, has come about in the context of not being ‘European, crystallised in the 2016 Brexit debate and vote, and the rise of right-wing Conservatism in England. ‘Be…
On Lindsay Paterson
This article is the first of two relating to an event at the University of Edinburgh to mark the coming retirement of Lindsay Paterson, Professor of Education Policy. Here three of Paterson’s close colleagues outline the very substantial contribution he has made to the study of Scotland, to understanding social inequality, and measuring the contribution of education to social mobility
Placing Yourself
A Far Away Place Close At Hand
Whose song is it anyway
Exploring Sovereignty in Scotland
It is often said that sovereignty is ever less meaningful in the modern world. Yet, sovereignty claims continue to proliferate. There are two elements: the subject of self‐determination (sovereignty) claims and the object . Scottish independence and Brexit are two examples, yet they differ in important ways. Brexit postulates that the British people are the subject and complete sovereignty is the object. The Scottish independence movement claims …
The Life of Marjorie
Snares and delusions
Changing places
How are Scottish elites educated? Is Scotland simply England writ small with Oxbridge and private schools predominating? Do private day schools mainly in the cities provide the core of elites? How important are education authority schools? How have patterns changed, if at all, between 1986 and 2019? Using ‘ Who's Who in Scotland’, this article charts the changing composition of elites especially among the political, legal and administrative class…
The City
Property and social relations landlordism and changing property relations the political economy of place property and political power managing property - the new landlords the persistence of petty landlordism the world they have lost property, politics and reproduction. Appendices: sampling and interviews occupational classification politics and property - a note on methods.
Scotland - The Brand
"Tartanry and 'Balmoralty': is Scotland's thriving heritage industry an economic blessing or the curse of negative stereotyping? Since the eighteenth century, heritage has been synonymous with 'heritage tourism'. This book is the first to explore the images which this industry conveys and to analyse its centrality to Scotland's definition of itself." "Based on an influential study by three leading sociologists, it examines the specific role and c…
Understanding Scotland
Who do you say you are
In discussion of `identity politics' in modern Britain, issues of ethnicity and national identity rarely seem to connect in the literature. Whereas the vocabulary and rhetoric of ethnicity belong to a framework of `multiculturalism', those of nationalism and national identity relate to constitutional politics and the devolution of power. The article argues that this separation is a result of differential patterns of migration in the postwar years…
The Markers and Rules of Scottish National Identity
This article examines how people set about the task of national identity construction and maintenance in the context of a study of landed and arts elites in Scotland. With reference to our empirical material throughout, we outline the key national identity processes: claim, attribution and the receipt of claims and attributions. Central to these are identity markers and rules. Identity markers are those social characteristics presented to others …
Who are We? Problematising National Identity
While the concern 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 negotiated nature of n…
Constructing National Identity
National identities are not essentially fixed or given but depend critically on the claims which people make in different contexts and at different times. The processes of identity rest not simply on the claims made but on how such claims are received, that is validated or rejected by significant others. Because actors are able, up to a point, to anticipate validation or rejection in particular contexts and at particular times, this influences th…
Claiming national identity
Using data from the British and Scottish Social Attitudes surveys 2006, this article examines the willingness of people living and born in England and Scotland to accept or reject claims to national identity made by those living in but not born in the appropriate territory. It compares the way claims employing key markers, notably birthplace, accent, parentage, and 'race' are received in the two countries. It is a significant finding that the res…
Birth, Blood and Belonging
Scotland is often seen as a good example of a civic/territorial rather than an ethnic/cultural form of nationalism. From the 1970s the campaign for a Scottish parliament stressed an inclusive, residence based, civic sense of being Scottish, and more recently, Scotland's political elites have seen the new parliament as an endorsement of territorial belonging. How valid are these assumptions? To what extent is political ideology at odds with people…
Unmasking Britannia
British national identity is a supranational identity deriving from an imperial past. Warfare created Britain in the eighteenth century, and at first glance mass war in the twentieth century seemed to reinforce it. War, however, was a twoedged sword. On the one hand, it dominated the lives of Britons between 1900 and 1945, yet war and its social-political demands weakened the fabric of the British state which was designed to be a nation-state, ra…
Whither Britishness? English and Scottish people in Scotland*1
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 …
National identity and economic development
This article attempts to move beyond assumptions that nationalism is essentially cultural and/or narrowly political, and that it is primarily past‐oriented and defensive. We do this by examining evidence relating to the creative (re)construction of the nation from a contemporary economic perspective. Paying particular attention to Scotland and Wales, we show that the mobilisation of national identity within this process of (re)construction is not…
National identity and social inclusion
n In terms of our national identity who we are and are judged to be in a particular context depends on how well our claims are regarded by those around us. Being considered not `one of us? means being an outsider whether one wants to be or not. National identity may lead ultimately to social inclusion or exclusion. Using mainly 2005 survey data, this paper explores cultural markers such as ethnicity, birthplace, residence, accent and ancestry reg…
Cultural capital in an understated nation
The concept of cultural capital is rarely used to explore specifically national cultural formations. This paper explores how Scotland, with its distinctive national identity, yet its constitutionally subordinate position within the UK offers an interesting case to explore the relationship between nationality and cultural capital. It examines how the concept can be used to unpick collective national identities, and how devolution might have change…
Being British
An assumed decline in Britishness has rekindled concern over the ‘break up of Britain’. The creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 is taken as the cause and the effect of Scots having come to feel more Scottish and less British. Using data on public attitudes from British, and Scottish Social Attitudes surveys, this paper shows that, despite a strengthening sense of Scottishness over the last thirty years, the sense of being British is still…
Timespans and Plans Among Young Adults
This article uses data from a survey of young adults in Kirkcaldy, Fife, together with associated qualitative interviews, to throw empirical light on their sense of control over their lives and their perceived willingness and ability to plan their lives. Its principal conclusion, contrary to the suggestions of much previous literature, is that a majority of young adults of both genders do, by their early twenties at least, feel in control of thei…
The Conundrum of Scottish Independence
Urban Politics
Nationalism and Citizenship
Nationality and citizenship are frequently confused but analytically distinct concepts. In the context of the United Kingdom they are especially problematic, for state identity (British) and national identities (English, Scottish, Welsh, etc.) have evolved in a highly implicit manner since the state was formed in the eighteenth century. The development of multiculturalism in the second half of the twentieth century adds to this complexity and div…
Cohabitation and Commitment
Popular commentators on marriage and the family often interpret the increase in heterosexual couples living together without marrying as reduced willingness to create and honour life-long partnerships. Survey and in-depth interviews with samples of 20-29 year olds living in an urban area of Scotland finds little support for the postulated link between growing cohabitation and a weakened sense of commitment to long-term arrangements. Most of the c…
Confidence amid Uncertainty
The limited and sometimes contradictory published literature, mostly relating to younger age groups and non-British societies, suggests that planning and a longer time perspective are inhibited by economic insecurity, by tight structuring of the life course, and a track record of failing to achieve ambitions. This paper uses survey data, backed by qualitative interviews, to investigate planning and forethought in a sample of young adults in the S…
Politics in a Cold Climate
An important feature over the last 30 years has been the increasing shortfall in the Conservative vote in Scotland compared with England. The Conservative Party, despite social structural disadvantages in terms of housing tenure and social class, did unusually well until the mid-1950s, particularly among Unionists and Protestants. After considering the historical and religious factors explaining earlier Conservative political strength, it is argu…
A Divided Working Class? Planning and Career Perception in the Service and Working Classes
The contrast between the service class and the working class is central to much class analysis. This structural distinction, based on differences in the employment relationship, is analytically powerful, has validity, and is not in question here. The working class, however, is not homogeneous in all respects. This paper focuses on a sizeable group within the working class who perceive themselves as having (or having had) a career. As well as havi…
Sooner rather than later? Younger and middle-aged adults preparing for retirement
During the 1990s, the British population has been urged by government and financial institutions to make more personal preparation for retirement and to begin doing so while they are still relatively young. This paper, set within a wider analysis of people's long-term planning behaviour, investigates the extent to which a sample of the general population of Kirkcaldy in Scotland, mostly aged between 30 and 49, has given thought to the question of…
Debatable Land
Through a systematic programme of research into national identity we have developed a sound understanding of the processes of identity claim, attribution and receipt. Central to these processes are identity markers and rules. We have always sought contexts where national identity is either salient or problematic as identity construction then becomes most clearly apparent. Berwick- upon-Tweed, a town in England but located close to the Scottish bo…
Socialism and the Idea of the Nation
Socialism and the Idea of the Nation looks at the relationship between socialism and nationalism in both theory and practice in Europe over a broad time-span. The book discusses the origins and meaning of the nationalist idea, the concept of socialist internationalism and the transcendence of the idea of nation and socialism and nationalism in long established nation-states like England and France. It continues with an examination of socialism an…
Constitutional Crisis
Journal Article Constitutional Crisis: The Causes and Consequences of the 1992 Scottish General Election Result Get access LINDSAY PATERSON, LINDSAY PATERSON Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar ALICE BROWN, ALICE BROWN Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar DAVID McCRONE DAVID McCRONE Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affair…
Landlords in Edinburgh
Structure, Consciousness and Action
Discussion of class, of 'class interests' and 'class conflict' is currently a major preoccupation not only of academic writers in sociology and politics but also of many journalists and politicians. Reading the articles in llewspapers and weekly journals it is hard to recall how only a few years ago the use of class analysis was derided, the concept dismissed by many as archaic and inappropriate in any consideration of Britain in the sixtics. The…
Towns in Societies
Fascists
Urban Politics
Bourgeois Social Movements in Britain
Shorter Notices
The Constitution of Society
Safety in Numbers
Explaining nationalism
Unfairly Structured Cities
Ford
from Henry M. Paton (compiler), The Malcolms of Poltalloch, op. cit., pp. 122-123. 78 Ford: A Village in the West Highlands of Scotland Minutes of the Commissioners of Supply for Argyll, 2 June 1744 and 6 June 1745, in the Archives of Argyll and Bute District Council, Kilmory, Lochgilphead. ^Statistical Account of Scotland, Vol. 13 (1794). The Kilmartin Parish report is written by the Revd Mr Hugh Campbell. Ibid., p. 94: '. . . if the duty were t…
Consciousness and the Urban Experience
Class, Culture and Morality
In Britain, as in many other western countries, there emerged in the mid-1970s a variety of business associations, policy and research institutes and political leagues, committed not only to the restoration of a Conservative government, but also to a much broader refurbishing of conservatism. A network of organizations, individuals and ideas grew up that became identified as the New Right. The New Right, which clearly has an international charact…
Cities, Capitalism and Civilization
Politics in a Cold Climate
An important feature over the last 30 years has been the increasing shortfall in the Conservative vote in Scotland compared with England. The Conservative Party, despite social structural disadvantages in terms of housing tenure and social class, did unusually well until the mid-1950s, particularly among Unionists and Protestants. After considering the historical and religious factors explaining earlier Conservative political strength, it is argu…
Interpreting the Past, Understanding the Present
Excessive and unreasonable
Understanding Scotland
Constitutional Crisis
Journal Article Constitutional Crisis: The Causes and Consequences of the 1992 Scottish General Election Result Get access LINDSAY PATERSON, LINDSAY PATERSON Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar ALICE BROWN, ALICE BROWN Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar DAVID McCRONE DAVID McCRONE Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affair…
The Making of Scotland
Who Pays the Piper? Ownership and Control in Scottish Based Management Buyouts
Management buyouts have been seen by some commentators as restoring the owner-manager to the commercial and industrial scene. If correct this presents a novel twist to the long-running sociological debate on ownership and control which sees ownership as separated from control at the individual level. This paper reports results from a study of Scottish-based buyouts which occurred between 1982 and 1989. Only a small proportion of the total buyout …
Scottish opinion polls, 1991-1993
Regionalism and Constitutional Change in Scotland∗
MCCRONE D. (1993) Regionalism and constitutional change in Scotland, Reg. Studies 27, 507–512. In the British context, regionalism and nationalism have usually been seen as part of the same continuum. This paper argues that, on the contrary, they derive from quite different principles and histories. Regionalism is based on a political ideology and strategy which derives from a modernist theory of state-building and maintenance, while nationalism …
The Scotland—England Divide
Growing territorial cleavages within Britain have attracted considerable interest from social scientists in recent years. New spatial models of voting, accounting for the declining homogeneity of electoral behaviour, 1 have drawn attention to localised patterns of political support, as well as the emergence of regional cleavages across Britain as a whole. 2 Talk of a North–South split has become the common currency of political commentators to ac…
Political science (111 obras) · Sociology (98 obras) · Law (89 obras) · Politics (80 obras) · Law (68 obras) · Scottish History and National Identity (63 obras) · Political Systems and Governance (50 obras) · History (43 obras) · History (32 obras) · Irish and British Studies (31 obras)