Social Structure, Behaviour and Identity
'Berwick-upon-Tweed: local and national identity on an ambiguous border'.
June 1996-August 1998. Funder: The Leverhulme Trust
Brief description:
This project had two main objectives: first, to look at how people living near the Scotland-England border construct, manage and make sense of their identities, both national and local; and second, to examine what the border means to these people in cultural, political, economic and symbolic terms. The main programme of interviews involved 70 households in Berwick-upon-Tweed and a further 20 split evenly amongst villages located to the north and south of that town and in Scotland and England respectively. Further interviews were conducted with representatives from 35 associations in the town, involved in sporting, cultural, political, historical and economic activities.
Our findings from this project have highlighted that identity in Berwick-upon-Tweed is ambiguous and that this appears to be a response to an awareness of competing national claims (English and Scottish) in the town. Local people chose to prioritise their local identity as 'Berwickers' over national claims to be either English or Scottish. Berwick-upon-Tweed is jurisdictionally in England, yet has strong social, cultural, and economic links to Scotland. This strategy of localism amongst 'Berwickers' provided for them a solution to the problem of 'being national', within an ambiguous identity context.
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Forthcoming publications:
'Debatable land: national and local identity in a border town' - in an advanced draft form, and will shortly be submitted to a journal.
A monograph on identity in Berwick-upon-Tweed which will be worked into draft form over the first half of 2000.
Participants:
Professor Frank Bechhofer, Mr Richard Kiely and Dr Robert Stewart: all of the Research Centre for Social Sciences, University of Edinburgh. Professor David McCrone Department of Sociology, University of Edinburgh.