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Using data from the British and Scottish Social Attitudes surveys 2006, this article examines the willingness of people living and born in England and Scotland to accept or reject claims to national identity made by those living in but not born in the appropriate territory. It compares the way claims employing key markers, notably birthplace, accent, parentage and 'race' are received in the two countries. It is a significant finding that the results for the two countries do not differ greatly. National identity, thinking of oneself as 'exclusively national', is the critical criterion explaining the extent to which respondents reject claims, while there is a modest educational effect if the respondent does not have a university degree. National identity is not to be equated with citizenship but involves cultural markers of birth, ancestry and accent as well as residence. Understanding how people identify and use markers of national identity is not as straightforward as politicians in particular believe and imply. Keywords: National identity claims; identity markers; English; Scottish; British; race. DOI: 10.1080/01419870903457199

In terms of our national identity, who we are and are judged to be in a particular context depends on how well our claims are regarded by those around us. Being considered not 'one of us' means being an outsider whether one wants to be or not. National identity may lead ultimately to social inclusion or exclusion. Using mainly 2005 survey data, this paper explores cultural markers such as ethnicity, birthplace, residence, accent and ancestry regarding claims to be 'Scottish'. It shows that being born in Scotland enables people to make claims and to have them accepted. Claims to be Scottish by a white and a non-white person on the basis of various markers are received in much the same way. The cultural markers which people use to judge claims represent the raw materials of identity differences with the potential to become the basis of social exclusion under appropriate conditions. Keywords: National identity; social inclusion; cultural markers; Scotland; England.

Scotland is often seen as a good example of a civic/territorial rather than an ethnic/cultural form of nationalism. From the 1970s the campaign for a Scottish parliament stressed an inclusive, residence based, civic sense of being Scottish, and more recently, Scotland's political elites have seen the new parliament as an endorsement of territorial belonging. How valid are these assumptions? To what extent is political ideology, at odds with people's sense of their national identity? Using a qualitative approach, we explore different identity claims currently being made in post-devolution Scotland--those based on blood, birth and belonging. We argue that these are better conceptual tools for the purpose of unravelling the complexities of identity politics in this context than the contrast between civic and ethnic. Our data come from the Scottish part of a study in England and Scotland, and focus on three sets of respondents: English migrants to Scotland making blood or birth claims to Englishness and/or Britishness; English migrants making belonging claims to Scottishness; and Scottish nationals making claims for themselves as well as assessing migrants' claims. We also explore the significance of constitutional change in the context of respondents' identity negotiations, and examine whether it has affected their understandings of Scottishness.

Popular commentators on marriage and the family often interpret the increase in heterosexual couples living together without marrying as reduced willingness to create and honour life-long partnerships. Survey and in-depth interviews with samples of 20-29 year olds living in an urban area of Scotland finds little support for the postulated link between growing cohabitation and a weakened sense of commitment to long-term arrangements. Most of the cohabiting couples strongly stressed their `commitment'. Socially acceptable vocabularies of motive undoubtedly influenced answers but interviews helped to explore deeper meanings. Many respondents' views were consistent with previous research predictions of a weakening sense of any added value of marriage. At the same time, some respondents continued to stress the social significance of the distinction between marriage and cohabitation, consistent with research interpreting cohabitation as a `try and see' strategy part-way to the perceived full commitment of marriage. The notion that `marriage is better for children' continued to have support among respondents. While, on average, cohabiting couples had lower incomes and poorer employment situations than married couples, only very extreme adverse circumstances were presented as making marriage `too risky'. Pregnancy-provoked cohabitation was not always in this category. Cohabitation was maintained because marriage would `make no difference' or because they `had not yet got round to' marriage. Most respondents were more wary of attempting to schedule or plan in their personal life than in other domains and cohabitees' attitudes to partnership, including their generally `committed' approach, do not explain the known greater vulnerability of this group to dissolution.

This article examines how members of the rural elite in Scotland defend their ownership of large tracts of land in the face of powerful class and nationalist critiques. Referring to unique interview material throughout, we outline the key elements of how owners attempt to legitimate their landed interests. Their response to these two critiques relates to estate economics and more generally the ideology and rhetoric of 'responsible' stewardship. The latter allows owners to create a distinct status group identity for themselves as 'keepers of land,' one that is cohesive and subordinates any expected differences between them in terms of their residence characteristics, how they acquired their land, and their national identity. This is explained with reference to a diminishing system of private estates in Scotland and the need for landowners to maintain a united ideological front as they defend themselves in the face of mounting political pressure and land reform. Key Words: Landed Elite, Scotland, Identities, Values, Ideology

During the 1990s, the British population has been urged by government and financial institutions to make more personal preparation for retirement and to begin doing so while they are still relatively young. This paper, set within a wider analysis of people's long-term planning behaviour, investigates the extent to which a sample of the general population of Kirkcaldy in Scotland, mostly aged between 3o and 49, has given thought to the question of retirement, feels they have made financial preparation for it, and also how comfortable they expect retirement to be. While it seems likely that early planning for retirement is more common today than 20 years ago, there remain substantial sections of the population, including-but going well beyond- many in lower income groups, who appear not to be preparing, for varying combinations of reasons (including family responsibilities, personal history, cultural and general orientation to life). The study concludes that planning for retirement must be seen as part of planning as a whole, and that the propensity to plan is the outcome of a complex web of material, social, cultural and psychological factors. This suggests that even very high profile urging from politicians and financial institutions is unlikely to deliver adequate pensions for significant sections of the UK population. Keywords: retirement, planning, financial preparation.

Growing territorial cleavages within Britain have attracted considerable interest from social scientists in recent years. New spatial models of voting, accounting for the declining homogeneity of electoral behaviour, have drawn attention to localised patterns of political support, as well as the emergence of regional cleavages across Britain as a whole. Talk of a North-South split has become the common currency of political commentators to account for regional disparities between Conservative and Labour support. Alongside these local and regional divisions in voting patterns, there is a new interest in broader aspects of the political differences between the nations of the UK, notably between England on the one hand, and Scotland and Wales on the other.

Management buyouts have been seen by some commentators as restoring the owner-manager to the commercial and industrial scene. If correct this presents a novel twist to the long-running sociological debate on ownership and control which sees ownership as separated from control at the individual level. This paper reports results from a study of Scottish-based buyouts which occurred between 1982 and 1989. Only a small proportion of the total buyout finance is raised in the form of voting shares, which does indeed enable the buy-out team, albeit at the personal risk of considerable sums of money, to obtain majority control of the voting equity. However, in firms formerly in private hands, it is often the case that, while the management team retain formal control, they hold a smaller proportion of the voting shares than the previous owners. Crucially, however, the financial institutions, in exchange for providing equity and debt finance, enforce conditions which potentially constrain the owner-managers severely. In the last analysis the overall strategy of the company is too often in the hands of its financiers to allow the conclusion that the management buyout represents the reversal of the separation of ownership and control., 'The management buyout remarries ownership and control within industry, and encourages independent entrepreneurial decision making.' Wright and Coyne, 1985:3 'Although you're a management buyout you've still not got rid of [...]

This article examines how people set about the task of national identity construction and maintenance in the context of a study of landed and arts elites in Scotland. With reference to our empirical material throughout, we outline the key national identity processes: claim, attribution and the receipt of claims and attributions. Central to these are identity markers and rules. Identity markers are those social characteristics presented to others to support a national identity claim and looked to in others, either to attribute national identity, or receive and assess any claims or attributions made. Identity rules are probabilistic rules of thumb, guidelines to how these identity markers are interpreted, combined or given precedence over others within these three processes. Particular attention is given to identity rules, and consideration of the contexts in which they are adhered to or transgressed.

As a reviewer I approach a Festschrift with foreboding. I seldom find them satisfying, yet the motives which produce them are so worthy that to be critical seems churlish and [...]