Transatlantic Scots

by Celeste Ray, James Hunter, Margaret Bennett, Edward J. Cowan, Paul Basu

Overview

Examines the impact of the Scottish legacy on North American cultures and heritage.

During the past four decades, growing interest in North Americans' cultural and ancestral ties to Scotland has produced hundreds of new Scottish clan and heritage societies.  Well over 300 Scottish Highland games and gatherings annually take place across the U.S. and Canada. 
Transatlantic Scots is a multidisciplinary collection that studies the regional organization and varied expressions of the Scottish Heritage movement in the Canadian Maritimes, the Great Lakes, New England, and the American South. From diverse perspectives, authorities in their fields consider the modeling of a Scottish identity that distances heritage celebrants from prevalent visions of whiteness. Considering both hyphenated Scots who celebrate centuries-old transmission of Scottish traditions and those for whom claiming or re-claiming a Scottish identity is recent and voluntary, this book also examines how diaspora themes and Highland imagery repeatedly surface in regional public celebrations and how traditions are continually reinvented through the accumulation of myths. The underlying theoretical message is that ethnicity and heritage survive because of the flexibility of history and tradition. 
This work is a lasting contribution to the study of ethnicity and identity, the renegotiation of history and cultural memory into heritage, and the public performance and creation of tradition.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780817384203
Publisher:	University of Alabama Press
Publication date:	07/26/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	381
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Celeste Ray is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee. She is the author of Highland Heritage: Scottish Americans in the American South and editor of Southern Heritage on Display: Public Ritual and Ethnic Diversity within Southern Regionalism.

Table of Contents

Contents List of Illustrations 000 Foreword James Hunter 000 Introduction Celeste Ray 000 1. Transatlantic Scots and Ethnicity Celeste Ray 000 2. Scottish Immigration and Ethnic Organization in the United States Celeste Ray 000 3. A Brief History of Organized Scottishness in Canada Michael Vance 000 4. From the Quebec-Hebrideans to "les Écossais-Québécois": Tracing the Evolution of a Scottish Cultural Identity in Canada's Eastern Townships Margaret Bennett 000 5. Powerful Pathos: The Triumph of Scottishness in Nova Scotia Michael Vance 000 6. You Play It as You Would Sing It: Cape Breton, Scottishness, and the Means of Cultural Production Jonathan Dembling 000 7. The North American Émigré, Highland Games, and Social Capital in International Communities Grant Jarvie 000 8. Troubling Times in the Scottish-American Relationship Andrew Hook 000 9. Bravehearts and Patriarchs: Masculinity on the Pedestal in Southern Scottish Heritage Celebration Celeste Ray 000 10. Finding Colonsay's Emigrants and a "Heritage of Place" John W. Sheets 000 11. Pilgrims to the Far Country: North American "roots-tourists" in the Scottish Highlands and Islands Paul Basu 000 12. Tartan Day Edward J. Cowan 000 13. Transatlantic Scots, Their Interlocutors, and the Scottish Discursive Unconscious Colin McArthur 000 Contributors 000 Index 000

Editorial Reviews

"Anthropologist Ray (Univ. of the South) has assembled an impressive collection of essays that offer a comprehensive, insightful view of Scottish ethnicity in North America. The compilation reaches across academic boundaries, combining regional histories of institutional Scottish ethnicity in Canada and the southern US with anthropological analysis and interdisciplinary scholarship. The essays also cover a wide ideological spectrum in their discussion of the reasons behind the contemporary resurgence of expatriate interest in Scottish heritage, ranging from Andrew Hook's attribution of regional racism in the southern US to Ray's focus on interracial participation in Scots American festivities. The collection's most significant contribution comes through Ray's acknowledgement of expatriate creativity. This insight frees contributors from a pedantic fixation on authenticity and encourages them to address deeper issues such as the rise of Scottish heritage tourism, gender constraints at Highland games, and the establishment of Tartan Day in the US. The collection transcends the simple debate over the merits of Scottish ethnicity to address the more profound questions regarding its nature. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries."
—CHOICE

“Transatlantic Scots is a sophisticated theoretical treatment written in a lively and readable style. . . . This is a terrific collection.” —Sydel Silverman, City University of New York
 
 

"A first-generation study of this key phenomenon.  Its innovative and contemporary analysis fills a gaping hole within the broad core continuum of circum-Atlantic ethnicity and makes a major contribution to the study of transnational heritage and cultural memory. Words like vigorous, rare, and convergent describe this book."—Martha Ward, University of New Orleans

From the Publisher