Social Structure, Behaviour and Identity
'Beyond Berwick: Local and national identity across the border - a contextual and methodological development'.
December 1998- October 1999 Funder: The Leverhulme Trust.
Brief description:
'Beyond Berwick' was a brief follow-up project designed to provide further support for, and to build upon, findings from our 'Berwick-upon-Tweed' project with a view to the following questions: whether the ambiguity that surrounds the national identity of people in Berwick-upon-Tweed extends any considerable distance on either side of the Scotland-England border; whether among those living a matter of miles from Berwick-upon-Tweed local identity is prioritised in the same way as it is in Berwick-upon-Tweed and how the claims of localism made by Berwickers are received by them. The importance of identity claims, and moreover the receipt of these claims, remains the core of our continuing empirical interest in national identity processes.
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Twenty five semi-structured household interviews were conducted in Eyemouth, a Scottish town 9 miles north of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and the same number in Alnwick, an English town, 30 miles to the south. This project has only recently been completed but we can summarise our initial findings as follows. Local identity is highly significant to residents of both Alnwick and Eyemouth. However, it is not given priority over national identity in the same manner as in Berwick-upon-Tweed, nor is claiming national identity avoided. In Alnwick and Eyemouth local identity is generally seen to be nested within national identity rather than dominating it. The ambiguity that surrounds the national identity of people in Berwick-upon-Tweed does not appear to extend any considerable distance from the border. People from Eyemouth and Alnwick have no problems in providing clear and articulate accounts of themselves as Scottish and English respectively. This ambiguity seems to revolve only partly around the proximity of towns like Berwick-upon-Tweed to the border and be due also to certain unique forces - historical, cultural and demographic - in Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Our results from the 'Beyond Berwick' study show that those living close to Berwick-upon-Tweed, on both sides of the border are largely unwilling to validate the claim made by people from Berwick-upon-Tweed that they are Berwickers rather than English or even Scottish. What is extremely interesting was that people in these towns attributed national identity to Berwickers in different ways. People from Eyemouth saw them as English, while the majority of people from Alnwick saw them as 'Scots'. The fact that people in Alnwick and Eyemouth attributed national identity to Berwickers in sharply contrasting ways provides further evidence for our view that national identity, far from being fixed or given, is socially constructed, negotiated and influenced by context.
Forthcoming publications:
Material from this 'Beyond Berwick' project will also form part of the planned monograph on identity in Berwick-upon-Tweed.
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.