Becoming an Islander through Action in The Scottish Hebrides

Abstract

This article explores the way in which community belonging may be imagined and enacted. It begins with an introduction to a small Inner Hebridean island community and a discussion of the invisibility of incomers in representations of Scotland’s past and present. It describes how the island came to be populated as it is today with people of diverse backgrounds. Drawing on three years of fieldwork, it shows how progression along an ‘incomer/islander continuum’ may be demonstrated through social action in the present. It suggests that while such everyday action may not be consciously equated with ethnic or ‘island’ identity, it is often a more revealing and lasting marker of local identity than overtly constructed symbolic markers of ancestry, locality, or blood relationship. Consciously waved ‘flags’ of island (or national or class) belonging which include, sometimes, the wearing of kilts, recounting of local history, or public celebration of local event/ritual, have been fairly common focal points in anthropological description. While these displays of identity are telling, the evidence in this article suggests that people who manipulate such symbols remain outside the living and changing community unless they also engage in appropriate everyday social action. This raises critical issues about methodology and focus in the social anthropology of identity and change.