Author: Elizabeth Carnegie
E-mail: e.carnegie@sheffield.ac.uk
Institution: University of Sheffield
Title: Beautiful, Rugged and Flawed: 'New World Scots' Imaginings of a Left Land
Abstract:
This paper drawing on a survey conducted with over 650 diasporic Scots in New
Zealand, Australia, United States, and Canada, explores how they celebrate, maintain
and perform their Scottishness as a form of ‘returning’ and determines that the
imagined Scotland, as a left land, serves as a ‘symbolic anchor’ for such
communities. Findings highlight often conflicting views of a contemporary Scotland
shaped by mythologies of place and narratives of exile and migration. Thus, survey
participants refer to a largely rural, ‘barren and beautiful’ homeland, with its ‘dour,
poor, cheery’ current inhabitants and memories formed of a Scotland that needed to
be left behind in order for its (essentially nomadic) people to flourish. Scotland
remains a place to call ‘home’ despite differences in opinions and attitudes of
diasporic Scots to Scots in Scotland and as forefathers within the diaspora and
within the ‘desolate’ land cited as ‘spectacular in the north, sentimental in the
islands, dysfunctional in the cities’ and always ‘far, far, away’. This paper therefore
questions whether, and to what extent ‘New World’ Scots can be viewed as
inhabiting Basu’s ‘clanscape’ (2005) whilst, imagining the old Scotland as
Brigadoon’s fantasy landscape, and contemporary Scotland as an urban wasteland.
In so doing it examines how individuals’ touristic experiences of the actual Scotland
have been shaped by their real or imagined past relationship with Scotland, by the
formalised narratives of exile that shape collective memory, by celebrating Scottish
‘traditional’ culture within the Diaspora or by maintaining links with modern
Scotland.
Author Bio:
Elizabeth Carnegie: Research areas include museums and audiences and public
memory, and religion and cultural identity. She is currently researching the role of
contemporary faith in society and the shaping of cultural and religious identities
within Diasporic communities. She currently lectures in arts and culture at the
University of Sheffield and holds a PhD in representation (Edinburgh) and an M.A in
Museum Studies (Leicester). A former curator, she has participated in a number of
high profile and award winning projects including being a member of the team
devising the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, Glasgow (1993).