
The Scots Imagination and Modern Memory
Andrew Blaikie(Author)
Edinburgh University Press
Published on 22. March 2010
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-0-7486-1786-9 (ISBN)
Description
This highly original study explores how different, but connected ways of seeing infuse relationships between place and belonging. Its argument is that all memories, whether fleeting glimpses or elaborated narratives, necessarily invoke imagined pasts - tenement life, island cultures, vanished moralities, even the origins of social science. But do these multiple recollections share a common frame of reference? Are perceptions conditioned by a collective social imaginary?Visions of nation and community, from Adam Ferguson's ideas on the development of civil society through John Grierson's pioneering of documentary film to the structures of feeling in popular fiction, reflect the impact of modernity on Scottish culture since the late eighteenth century. While landscape as the symbolic 'face of Scotland' and its attendant mental contours have been produced and debated in many genres, including travel literature, social commentary, novels and magazines, changes in the means of capturing and presenting images, particularly the emergent possibilities of the photograph, have affected the ways we identify and remember. The analysis adopts a broadly sociological approach, but its range lends equal appeal to social historians, cultural geographers, and particularly those pursuing visual or memory studies.
Reviews / Votes
A tour de force by Andrew Blaikie, who tells us that the Scots didn't invent the modern world; we only imagined it. And in so doing, we have become creatures of those images. -- David McCrone, Edinburgh University A tour de force by Andrew Blaikie, who tells us that the Scots didn't invent the modern world; we only imagined it. And in so doing, we have become creatures of those images.More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
20 black and white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 163 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
567 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7486-1786-9 (9780748617869)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Andrew Blaikie is Professor of Historical Sociology at the University of Aberdeen. He is author of Illegitimacy, Sex and Society: Northeast Scotland, 1750-1900 (1994) and Ageing and Popular Culture (1999).
Content
Acknowledgements; List of illustrations; Chapter 1 Scotland and the places of memory; SECTION 1 ENCOUNTERING MODERNITY: Chapter 2 Before and after modernity: the legacy of Adam Ferguson; Chapter 3 The eyes of modernity: John Grierson's sociology; SECTION II PLACING IDENTITIES: Chapter 4 Among the wee Nazareths: myths of moral community; Chapter 5 Retrieving 'that invisible leeway': landscapes, cultures, belonging; SECTION III LOCAL VISIONS: Chapter 6 A pattern of islands: photographs in the cultural account; Chapter 7 Remembering 'The Forgotten Gorbals'; Chapter 8 Finding ways home; Index