Comment on Frank Bechhofer, David McCrone, Richard Kiely and Robert Stewart, `Constructing National Identity: Arts and Landed Elites in Scotland'

Abstract

As Bechhofer, McCrone, Kiely and Stewart point out, there has been a tendency in the study of nationalism in particular, and in the social sciences in general, to assume that national identity is simply conferred upon individuals by the nation-state. Their article 'Constructing National Identity: Arts and Landed Elites in Scotland' seeks to rectify this emphasis (Bechhofer et al 1999). Through theoretical argument and discussion of survey work in Scotland, they arrive at the conclusion that, 'National identity should not in our view be seen as a fairly passive means by which citizens are bound culturally and socially to the state, but a far more interactive process whereby individuals have available the means for constructing who they are and who they want to be' (1999:530). National identity is not, they earlier claim, 'essential, given, unproblematic and unchanging', but is 'constructed in the processes of everyday life' (1999:521). Certain qualifications are placed upon these claims. The writers acknowledge that, on the one hand, the views (in themselves anticipated) of 'significant others' check the ability of the individual to successfully make a claim upon a particular identity, and, on the other, that most of the time for most people national identity is unproblematic and unquestioned. However, these concessions seem to make little impact upon their actual discussion and do not detract from the central claim advanced that the formulation and presentation of national identity is a matter of individual choice. The claim that national identity is constructed and contested is not in itself original. For instance, the Slovene sociologist Slavoj Žižek argues that in identifying themselves with a nation the 'Nation-Thing' an individual draws upon a range of somewhat arbitrary symbols and cultural practices (Žižek 1990:52). This relates to the now generally recognised wider point that there is no single national identity for any nation, but a number of them (Bhabha 1990). Alternative visions of nationhood 195