Gardiner, Michael (2005). Modern Scottish Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (ISBN: 0748620265 hbk / 0748620265 pbk) Price: £45 (hbk) / £15.99 (pbk). 218pp.
Reviewed by Monica Germanà (University of Derby)
Gardiner's volume offers a comprehensive survey of the cultural complexity and multiplicity of modern Scotland, defined - borrowing Deleuze's words - as a problematic 'minor nation'. Each chapter of Modern Scottish Culture outlines a specific area of Scottish culture - history, education, religion, law, arts, etc. - highlighting the defining qualities of each cultural section, gradually tracing the debatable boundaries of modern and contemporary Scotland. All chapters include detailed bullet-point summaries, reader-friendly concise bibliographies comprehensive of recommended websites, and a section of suggested topics for further discussion - extremely useful reference material, no doubt, for seminar / class preparation.
The core chapters concentrating on the 'institutions' - law, religion and education - emphasise the unique function played by these fundamental sectors of Scottish culture in the perpetuation of distinctively Scottish values and the construction of a modern Scottish nation. Comparing the English and Scottish education systems, for instance, Gardiner highlights the stronger democratic tradition - and older establishment - of the latter. Resisting contemporary trends to privatisation, Scottish education, by tradition, blends the need for widely accessible education with a long-standing preference for longer, less specialised degree courses than those available South of the border.
Particularly engaging is the chapter which traces the 'Contexts of Modern Scottish literature'. Here Gardiner suggests that a pervasive sense of intellectualism has always existed within the Scottish canon, 'for all its faults, Scotland has never really been anti-intellectual'. One could argue that Scottish culture has in fact always been split along several cultural fault-lines, one of them being the popular / high culture dichotomy presented, for instance, in James Hogg's items from Shepherd's Calendar published in Blackwood's in the early nineteenth century(1818-1828). But this is probably a touch of academic pedantry on my side. The chapter outlines the evolutionary trajectory running from the kailyard literature through to the 1920s Scottish Renaissance and culminating in the last quarter of the century with what has frequently been baptised as the 'Second Renaissance': it is in the 1980s that authors such as Edwin Morgan, James Kelman and Alasdair Gray re-discover new ways of representing Scotland and its culture. Kelman's linguistic revolution and Gray's magical-realist epic style mark, Gardiner reminds us, the start of an eminently innovative phase in Scottish literature alongside the rise of a Scottish cultural and political revival leading to the achievement of devolution.
Whereas I wish the chapter on visual arts could have perhaps explored the contemporary scene in more detail, the section on 'Mass Media' provides a thorough analysis of representations of Scottish culture in journalism, television and cinema, delineating an accurate and far-reaching profile of Scottish culture's progressive movement towards the centre from the peripheral position occupied in British television and cinema throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Once again, it is the in 1980s that Scottish culture comes to the forefront of screen productions with the rise of internationally acclaimed Scottish directors (Ken Loach, Danny Boyle, Lynne Ramsay) and popular films set in contemporary Scotland (My name is Joe, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting). As well as being informative, the section interrogates the sudden popularity and authenticity of such representations of Scotland on screen. The immediate and universal success of Hollywood productions of Brave Heart and, previously, Rob Roy, poses unavoidable questions regarding their debatable political message, focussing as they do, on 'fantastic figures, super-human, super-ethnic, and super-masculine, and ultimately a bit absurd.' The underlying tensions and the pervasively proposed non-ethnocentric definition of Scottish identity give Gardiner's study a cohesive theme interwoven in each of the volume's chapters.
The volume is a thoroughly valuable - and enjoyable - source of critical information, but the most thought-provoking issues feature in the introductory chapters - 'Introduction' and 'What is Scotland?' As we infer from book's theoretical boundaries, the thorniest questions underlying the whole study are 'What is Scotland?' and - more controversially - 'why bother with Scotland specifically?' Underpinning the hazards embedded in any (contemporary) manifestation of nationalism, simultaneously Gardiner discusses the complex layers of national identity which make up modern Scotland. Eschewing purely ethnic definitions of Scottish identity, the author discusses the paradoxical status of the 'stateless' nations which form the United Kingdom, none of which may claim citizenship to their respective territories. From a cultural point of view, being British, Gardiner argues, is no less problematic for an Englishman, than for a Scotsman, particularly during and after the Empire's twilight: 'Post-Britishness [...] has left a vacuum in which new national cultures must be negotiated. [...] England, a part of the UK, is also a minor nation crippled by the idea of its own majority, but it is having a much harder time identifying a specific national culture.'
The broad scope of the volume and the author's engaging style offer stimulating arguments which will undoubtedly reach a wide range of international readers with an interest in modern Scotland. Likely to be appreciated by a general readership, the volume is particularly recommended for 'A' level and undergraduate students.