The Same, but Different: why Scotland?

Abstract

Forty years ago last autumn I became a sociologist. I went to Aberdeen in October 1965 to do English Lit, was persuaded into sociology 1 as an outside subject because history was 'full', and was immediately hooked* Though I didn't graduate for another 4 years, I saw the world through sociological eyes. I was lucky that sociology at Aberdeen was in its infancy; indeed, it was the 2 n d department in Scotland after Edinburgh which began undergraduate courses in 1964. Others came later. Sociology, however, was largely in Scotland but not of it. As an undergraduate, I learned a lot about families in Bethnal Green, and gangs in Chicago, but virtually nothing about my own country. This was of course the era of *us-too' sociology, in the sense that modernisation theory was supreme, asserting that social change was a linear process though which all 'industrial' societies travelled. (Later on, we had a phase of 'not-us' sociology which tried to convince that Scotland was some kind of colony of England, that it was systematically and deliberately 'under­ developed', in the language of the day, but that didn't wash either.) That left of course a myriad of cases that did not fit the general theory, and inordinate effort went into showing that they were 'backward', unwilling to follow future pathways, or simply charmingly deviant and exotic cases which proved the rule. Scotland was probably seen as a bit of both, insofar as it was seen at all.