Scottish Context Research Articles

Everyday Use of the City Cemetery: A Study of Environmental Qualities and Perceived Restorativeness in a Scottish Context

As the number of historical urban cemeteries where interment is no longer available continues to grow, the everyday use and restorative benefit of these spaces (beyond commemoration and remembrance) is worthy of further exploration. This study primarily investigates the everyday use of two historical urban cemeteries in Edinburgh through behavioural observation (N = 185). We also explore further the relationships between cemetery qualities and perceived restorativeness through an interviewer-administered survey (N = 134) and face-to-face interviews (N = 24) at the sites. The survey findings showed that usage and aesthetics in the cemeteries were both significantly and positively associated with various restorative qualities including ‘being away’, ‘fascination’ and ‘compatibility’. The data provided from the interviews and behavioural observations complement the survey findings that the everyday use of urban cemeteries (i.e., using them as an alternative route for pedestrian journeys or simply walking the dog) could facilitate users’ mental restorative process. After controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, provision of facilities (e.g., benches and toilets) was found to have no significant association with any restorative qualities. Using a mixed method approach, this study provides a novel understanding of how the urban population uses, and perceives, old urban cemeteries in contemporary Scotland.

What’s citizenship got to do with mental health? Rationale for inclusion of citizenship as part of a mental health strategy

PurposePeople with lived experience of mental health problems (MHPs) are often marginalised and have difficulty achieving community inclusion. Citizenship, a relatively novel concept in mental health, provides a means of understanding what is necessary for marginalised individuals and groups to gain a sense of belonging within their communities. By exploring the “what, why, how and who” of citizenship, the purpose of this paper is to provide a rationale for the inclusion of citizenship as part of a person-centred and holistic mental health strategy.Design/methodology/approachA community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, with peer researchers, was adopted to develop a model of citizenship within a Scottish context. The aim of the model is to link the concept of citizenship with specific strategies that systems, agencies and individuals can use within mental health policy and practice to promote greater inclusion and participation. Concept mapping was used as part of a mixed-methods participatory methodology and data were then analysed using multivariate statistical methods of multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis.FindingsIt is argued that using a CBPR approach, utilising concept mapping, encourages the development of a model of citizenship that is entirely grounded in the perspectives and lived experiences of people with MHPs. The need for adequate resources, preparatory work, training, research management and reflexive practice are key to the success of a CBPR approach with peer researchers.Originality/valueWorking with peer researchers and key stakeholder groups is central to a CBPR approach and the implementation of a model of citizenship within mental health policy and practice. Developing a model of citizenship derived specifically from the experiences of people with lived experience is likely to promote their inclusion. It provides a means of challenging the structural deficits and inequalities that cause distress and prevent people with lived experience of MHPs of recovering their citizenship.

‘Scottish Exceptionalism?’ Trade Unions and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1976–1994

Since the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, historians have begun to explore the role played by the various Anti-Apartheid Movements (AAM) that developed globally in the latter half of the 20th century, although much more work remains to be done. While scholars have begun to explore the history of anti-apartheid opposition in Britain, there has not yet been any systematic study of this within a Scottish context. Such an omission overlooks the fact that activists in Scotland took the decision in 1976 to form the Scottish Committee of the Anti-Apartheid Movement (SAAM), thereby charting their own path within the global struggle to end apartheid. In addressing the question of ‘Scottish exceptionalism’, this article argues for the development of a distinctly Scottish scholarship pertaining to the history of anti-apartheid activism in Britain. It adopts a case-study approach, examining trade union involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle and asking whether this was uniform across Britain. Through a comparative analysis of the responses of both the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), it is argued that, in terms of its support for the liberation movements within South Africa and the AAM in Britain and Scotland, the STUC was, for much of the second half of the 20th century, significantly more forthcoming than its southern counterpart in the cause of anti-apartheid.

Models of Collective Working. Insights on the Scottish Context

Models of Collective Working. Insights on the Scottish Context

The Dynamics of Co-Production in the Context of Social Care Personalisation: Testing Theory and Practice in a Scottish Context

AbstractIncreasing pressures on social systems have spurred innovations in service delivery models. One such innovation is an increased focus on co-production-based models of care, which focus on increased personal autonomy and service-user self-determination. However, there is little empirical evidence on how co-production interacts with other social policies, such as personalisation. This paper uses data from two qualitative case studies to explore the role of co-production for personalisation in the context of recent Scottish policy initiatives. We use Osborneet al.’s (2016) [‘Co-production and the co-creation of value in public services: a suitable case for treatment?’,Public Management Review, 18, 639–653] co-production matrix to understand what forms of co-production are used in personalisation, what factors act as drivers and barriers, how co-production relates to outcomes, and how co-production theory can inform social policy and legislative reform on personalisation.

Perpetual Vanishing: Animal Lives in Contemporary Scottish Fiction

Animals, writes Akira Mizuta Lippit, ‘exist in a state of perpetual vanishing’: they haunt human concerns, but rarely appear as themselves. This is especially notable in contemporary Scottish fiction. While other national literatures often reflect the ‘animal turn’ in contemporary theory, the number of twenty-first-century Scottish novels concerned with human–animal relations remains disproportionately small. Looking at a broad cross-section of recent and understudied novels, including Mandy Haggith’s Bear Witness (2013), Ian Stephen’s A Book of Death and Fish (2014), Andrew O’Hagan’s The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe (2010), Malachy Tallack’s The Valley at the Centre of the World (2018), James Robertson’s To Be Continued (2016), and Sarah Hall’s The Wolf Border (2015) highlights the marginalisation of both nonhuman animals and texts centred on them. The relative absence of engagement with animal studies in Scottish fiction and criticism suggests new opportunities for reevaluating the formulation of environmental concerns in a Scottish context. By moving away from the unified concepts of ‘the land’ to a perspective that includes the precarious relations between humans, nonhuman animals, and their environment, these texts highlight the need for greater, and more nuanced, engagement with fictional representations of nonhuman animals.

Hume as an Essayist: Comments on Harris's Hume: An Intellectual Biography

Hume as an Essayist:Comments on Harris's Hume: An Intellectual Biography Mikko Tolonen (bio) I was a Leverhulme visiting fellow at the University of St Andrews in 2012–13 when James Harris was working on Hume: An Intellectual Biography. At the time, I expected his book to take decades to finish due to the daunting nature of the task. During those years there were periods when we sat daily discussing Hume at the National Library of Scotland and its near vicinity. As a result of those conversations, we also wrote and published an article about Hume in the Scottish context.1 I look back to those days with warmth. I wanted to say this to point out that I am not impartial towards Harris, who I consider a friend, nevertheless, I am not responsible for what is advanced in James's book, and thus I can comment on it. James Harris succeeded in his undertaking much faster and better than what I expected—and my expectations were high. The focus of this paper is on Hume's essays in a broad sense. The topics I will engage with include writing an intellectual biography, style, method, political perspectives, religion, and what I call "a defense of the unity thesis" in Hume, in contrast to Harris's argument that, surprisingly bluntly, claims that there is no real continuity throughout Hume's works. What is it that you do when you write an intellectual biography? To me, it seems that the responsibility is overwhelming because you are not engaging in a regular scholarly debate, or what Quentin Skinner encourages us to do in historical research. The goal in Skinnerian intellectual history is not to put forward a "refereed perspective," but to find a new perspective which often means purposely arguing against what others have said. The objective is thus to formulate a novel, justified stance on some particular aspect of political thought. This approach is apt also due to the practical reasons. We do not have access to the past as such that would enable us to formulate an "objective" perspective on intellectual history qua facts. [End Page 29] Hence, we are always engaged in a hermeneutic undertaking of a dialogue between previous interpretations and what we take away from our reading of the original sources, trying to find some new angle to a debate that is justified within some context of previous scholarship.2 If we share this idea of what intellectual history is, then we are willing to allow that even going to the extremes of the argumentative style will advance our understanding of the past, as long as the perspective is contextualized. This, I believe, can be contrasted to some extent to what Harris does in his book, which is about carefully considering the different sides of previous arguments in scholarship and formulating a position based on it. In a sense, the question then is whether it is possible to act as a referee and write an intellectual biography that would be more objective than other studies of Hume's intellectual development, to be flagged out as the general point of reference. To illustrate what I mean in Harris's case, let us consider the influence of Mandeville on Hume, a topic that I have been keenly interested in in my own past, and which Harris takes to be a relevant part of his story about Hume. When I attended my first Hume Society conference in 2005, I was afraid to defend the position of Hume as a Mandevillean thinker, because it was an unorthodox stance in the Hume Society at the time. Has this thinking about Mandeville's positive influence on Hume now become orthodox? I am not entirely sure about it. The reason why I am pointing this out is just to illustrate the nature of the game when one begins to write an intellectual biography—it is a tricky business to canonize different perspectives, because scholarship is consistently on the move. Whether we want it or not, this process of canonizing different perspectives, is also what separates a "regular" study of Hume's intellectual development from an intellectual biography. Balancing Act Over the years there have...

William Dunbar and the Querelle des Femmes: A Response to the Roman de

This paper examines two established works by the Scottish poet William Dunbar (c. 1460-1513) which appear in the 1568 Bannatyne manuscript: “The Golden Targe” and “Sen that I am Presoneir” (also known as “Beauty and the Prisoner”).1 Rather than simply rereading the familiar steps of the debate, I argue that Dunbar exploits his mastery of genre and style in order to subvert the usual terms of the querelle debate and reignite discourse in a Scottish context. In particular, Dunbar’s use of language is analysed, in terms of its appeal to the senses in his construction of gender. Ultimately I suggest that rather than two distinctly separate and stylistically opposed poems, one can read the “Targe” and “Presoneir” as a pair of cognate poems, a stylistic parallel to the disjointed dual authorship of the “Rose.

The role of educational psychologists in supporting nurture-based practices and policy development at a local and national level in Scotland: A position paper

AimsThis position paper illustrates how Educational Psychological Services (EPSs) have been instrumental through ever more systemic and universal ways of working to identify links between the needs within Scottish schools and targeted and universal nurturing approaches.MethodThis paper will initially demonstrate the appropriateness of a nurturing approach within a Scottish context, as a response to issues related both to mental health and to poverty. It will then continue by exploring how at both local and national levels, nurture-based practices have been embedded into policies and practice due to the influence of EPSs. It will demonstrate this through reference to the national context and the local authority (LA) level, using North Ayrshire Council (NAC) as an exemplar of how this can be achieved.FindingsThis paper will state that, while national and local policy have influenced the focus of EPSs’ priorities, so too has EPSs’ knowledge of psychology influenced national and local policy regarding nurturing approaches.LimitationsThis position paper is drawn from the Scottish education system and may not be fully representative of other contexts.ConclusionThere is an ongoing cycle of mutual influence, enabling the continual development of good practice within schools. This can offer a template of systemic working for the future development of the profession of the educational or ‘school psychologist’ on a wider scale.

Using deep neural networks on airborne laser scanning data: Results from a case study of semi‐automatic mapping of archaeological topography on Arran, Scotland

AbstractThis article presents results of a case study within a project that seeks to develop heavily automated analysis of digital topographic data to extract archaeological information and to expedite large area mapping. Drawing on developments in computer vision and machine learning, this has the potential to fundamentally recast the capacity of archaeological prospection to cover large areas and deal with mass data, breaking a dependency on human resource. Without such developments, the potential of the vast amount of archaeological information embedded in large topographic and image‐based datasets cannot be realized. The purpose of the case study reported on here is to assess existing developments in a Norwegian study against digital topographic data for the island of Arran, Scotland, examining the transferability of the approach and providing a proof of concept in a Scottish context. For Arran, three monument classes were assessed – prehistoric roundhouses, shieling huts of medieval or post‐medieval date, and small clearance cairns. These present different challenges to detection, with preliminary results ranging from a manageable mix of false positives and true identifications to the chaotic. The influence of variable morphology and the occurrence of other, largely natural, objects of confusion in the landscape is discussed, highlighting the potential improvements in automated detection routines offered by adding anthropogenic and natural false positives to additional confusion classes.

Developing a new drug recovery community in the UK: a qualitative study of the transferability of an intervention from San Patrignano, Italy, to Scotland

BackgroundAlthough the Scottish Government's 2008 national drugs strategy (Road to Recovery) and HM Government's 2017 Drug Strategy emphasise recovery, drug-related deaths continue to increase. An alternative approach is being developed by Independence from Drugs and Alcohol Scotland (IFDAS) inspired by the successful drug recovery community in San Patrignano, Italy. In contrast to harm-reduction measures, a drug recovery community is a complex psychosocial intervention designed to address the wider social determinants of addiction. We aimed to assess the programme theory of the San Patrignano model to identify key mechanisms and stakeholders' perceptions of mechanisms considered essential to transfer to, and those that need adapting for, the new drug recovery community in Scotland. MethodsThis qualitative study consisted of semi-structured interviews with knowledge-rich stakeholders, purposively sampled from San Patrignano (n=6) or IFDAS (10); observational notes recorded during 10 days' immersion in San Patrignano; and notes from meetings and events in both sites. Stakeholders had professional knowledge in a range of areas including social enterprise, clinical expertise, therapeutic recovery community methods, and government social policy. All qualitative datasets were analysed inductively with findings grounded in the data. We drew on realist principles to analyse the mechanisms of change in relation to context, at both individual and organisational levels. Data synthesis was guided by framework analysis. FindingsSan Patrignano stakeholders reported six mechanisms related to recovery at the individual level (commitment to change, removal from former social environment, communal living, peer mentor with lived experience, structure and routine, meaningful work). Four mechanisms contributed to success at the organisational level (visionary leadership, staff dedication, social enterprise, and adaptable learning organisation). IFDAS stakeholders reported mechanisms being directly transferred (eg, peer mentor with lived experience, social enterprise) and those being adapted for the Scottish context. InterpretationThis is one of the first studies to investigate transferability of a successful drug recovery community across different cultural contexts with the aim to prospectively identify essential mechanisms and adaptations required to enhance implementation of the new intervention in Scotland. This study will also contribute to formulation of generic principles on transferability of successful complex interventions across different sociocultural contexts. FundingUK Medical Research Council and Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office Complexity in Health Improvement programme (MC_UU_12017/14).

Increasingly Diverse: the Changing Ethnic Profiles of Scotland and Glasgow and the Implications for Population Health

Scotland’s population has become increasingly ethnically diverse. The aim of this study was to better understand future changes to the ethnic profile of the population and the implications for population health. The literature regarding ethnicity and health, particularly in the Scottish context, was reviewed alongside analyses of past trends and new future projections (2011–2031) of the size of the non-White ethnic minority population in Scotland and Glasgow (Scotland’s largest and most ethnically diverse city). The literature emphasises that the relationships between ethnicity, socioeconomic position (SEP) and health are extremely complex. In Scotland this complexity is arguably enhanced, given the different, less disadvantaged, SEP profile of many ethnic minority groups compared with those in other countries. Although indicators of overall health status have been shown to be better among many non-White ethnic minority groups compared with the White Scottish population, such analyses mask varying risks of particular diseases among different groups. This complexity extends to understanding the underlying causes of these differences, including the ‘healthy migrant’ effect, ‘acculturation’, and the impact of different types and measures of SEP. The proportion of the population belonging to a non-White ethnic group increased four-fold in both Scotland and Glasgow between 1991 and 2011. New projections suggest that by 2031, around 20% of Glasgow’s total population (and 25% of children) will belong to a non-White minority group. Given this, there is a clear need for policy-makers and service-planners to seek to understand the implications of these changes to the Scottish population.

Sense and Sensibilities: A Feminist Critique of Legal Interventions against Sexual Violence

Feminists have spent decades trying to reform laws and evidential procedures relating to sexual assault. Using the current Scottish context as a case study, I will argue that while efforts to reform the text of the substantive as well as evidential and procedural aspects of the law have been largely successful, in practice the impact of these reforms has not always been felt. Drawing on contemporary examples from Scotland, and setting these within the broader context of similar problems and arguments in other jurisdictions such as England and Wales, Australia and Canada, I will examine the ways in which the ‘laws on the books’ have not always translated smoothly through to ‘law in action’. The aim is to highlight an ongoing failure on the part of those charged with applying the law (judges, legal professionals, juries) to do so appropriately, raising the question of whether it makes sense for feminist scholars to try to engage with what seems like the entrenched ‘sensibilities’ of criminal law. It may well be that the contemporary battle ground is not over legal territory as such, but over whose voices are heard in public debates on sexual violence. Ultimately, I argue that our all too frequent failures to punish sexual violence in a meaningful way suggests that we need to think again about how we deal with issues of sexual violence in contemporary society.

Adapting the ToyBox obesity prevention intervention for use in Scottish preschools: protocol for a feasibility cluster randomised controlled trial

IntroductionThere is an increasing need for the adoption of effective preschool obesity prevention interventions to combat the high levels of early-childhood obesity in the UK. This study will examine the...

Securing Prison through Human Rights: Unanticipated Implications of Rights‐Based Penal Governance

AbstractHuman rights are a dominant framework for regulating prisons. However, there is little critical interrogation of human rights as they are actually translated into tools for governance. This article develops a critique of human rights by analysing and considering policy as a means of realising rights. It urges sustained and ethnographic attention to policy settings, arguing that policy exerts a form of agency. The article revisits critical criminological claims that reform expands penal control, examining this specifically in the context of human rights governance of prisons. To do so, it draws on the anthropology of policy and science and technology studies (STS) suggesting that these fields offer useful tools and insights in the study of policy. In the final part the discussion turns to three examples of human rights issues in the Scottish penal context to problematise rights‐driven penal policy and suggest directions for research.

Aural Textiles: Beyond Visual Pattern Making

Co-creation describes a process of bringing customer and creator together to produce items of mutual value, allowing the design aspect of production to sit between customer and creator. A major step-change enabling such a process is the ability to link consumer design inspiration with pattern creation software linked to manufacturing equipment. One aspect of supporting such a process includes fashioning tractable methods to collect and manipulate "design inspiration" that a customer can input into and that are amenable to the application of computer-based production. Here we describe research in progress exploring the use of "data-driven designs" that challenge the existing visual bias of textile design, using the Scottish context as an example; and offer up a process by which these explorations can be transformed towards a customer-creator model: transforming bioacoustics data recorded from the soundscape into woven, knitted, printed or embroidered textiles.

Jonathan Murray, The New Scottish Cinema

The cover of Jonathan Murray’s most recent book, examining the development of Scottish cinema from the 1990s to the 2000s, features a striking image from Red Road (Andrea Arnold, 2006). The actor Kate Dickie, who plays the lead character of Jackie, is rendered in dark profile against a bright yellow background, her identity obscured by the high-contrast lighting. The film, an apt choice for the book’s cover, was produced as part of the Advance Party initiative, led by Glasgow-based Sigma Films, and the Danish production company Zentropa, and is one of a number of films produced in Scotland in the 2000s that Murray describes as having demonstrated ‘the extent to which traditional ideas of a deliberate, dominant and didactic focus on the question of nation are not straightforwardly applicable to a significant proportion of contemporary Scottish filmmaking’ (p. 175). The image from Red Road was the key image used for the worldwide promotion of the film, serving to give a sense of the film’s narrative focus and Jackie’s literal position in the dark in her daily work as a CCTV operator, but also acting as an indicator of the film’s deliberate positioning as a transnational film. The image is notable for its lack of obvious identifiers with its Scottish context. The identity obscured is not only Jackie’s but Scotland’s; the film’s location, as its narrative image suggests, could be anywhere.1

The conservation “myths” we live by: Reimagining human–nature relationships within the Scottish marine policy context

There are growing calls for the articulation and consideration of different value systems and emotions in shaping conservation and natural resource management decisions and participatory resource governance. This requires recognition of the socio‐cultural relations attached to landscape and seascape in marine conservation policy. Taking into account the relationship between the socio‐natural environment and socio‐political institutions and processes complicates conservation. Making human values and assumptions explicit within the conservation discourse reveals the inadequacy of conservation that is focused on a biodiversity that is framed only as other‐than‐human nature. This paper considers how the perceived separation between nature and culture underpinning conservation policy and practice exacerbated a conflict between members of a small Scottish island community and the Scottish Government around the creation of a marine protected area (MPA) off the coast of the island. A rich maritime heritage and a distinctive way of knowing the sea suggested the presence of embedded values that appeared to be colliding with values driving the MPA designation process. Social, historical and cultural forces have shaped the perceptions of landscape and seascape of many of the islanders and can help to explain the local resistance to the MPA. Visual participatory methods were used to explore local understandings of the meaning of conservation. The case‐study offers insights into different ways in which marine spaces are conceptualised and how this relates to marine resource governance. It contributes to a more complete understanding of human relations with the marine environment in the context of a marine conservation conflict.

The Ethics of Care and Control Dilemmas in Mental Health

ABSTRACTThis paper provides a reflective account of a series of ethical dilemmas encountered throughout my first social work practice placement, which lasted three months. The ethical dilemmas encountered are centred on issues of care and control within the realm of mental health. All issues are discussed subjectively from my own value base. A critical analysis of the modern-day social and political climate that surrounds social work practice and the legal and policy context, which underpin it, is also included in the discussion. The discussion centres on practice legislated within the Scottish context, where there are devolved powers for health and social care from UK counterparts. The placement was within a residential care setting for adults with severe and enduring mental health issues, all of whom had a diagnosis of schizophrenia. The service was delivered under the auspices of a large voluntary organisation. Throughout this paper, I refer to the organisation as ‘A’.

Aligning policy and law? The creation of a domestic abuse offence incorporating coercive control

Since 2000, the Scottish Government has adopted a gendered definition of domestic abuse which explicitly positions it as both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality. Following the launch of a new strategy to prevent and eradicate violence against women and girls, the Scottish Government announced proposals to create, for the first time, a bespoke offence of domestic abuse, designed to encompass the spectrum of abusive acts that constitute domestic abuse, including emotional and psychological abuse. The new offence is intended to better reflect the experience of victims subject to coercive control, improve the criminal justice response and facilitate access to justice. It represents one of the most radical attempts yet to align the criminal justice response with contemporary policy and feminist conceptual understanding of domestic abuse as a form of coercive control. Drawing on feminist scholarship which has interrogated the value of law reform, we critically assess the scope of the legislation, the likely challenges associated with its use in the Scottish context, and the potential for unintended consequences.