Nation, culture and family : identity in a Scottish/Australian popular song tradition

This study arose out of an interest in my own family’s Scottish song traditions and a desire to understand them within a wider cultural context. Its purpose is to create a critical account of music and migrant identity that brings insights from folklore studies, cultural studies, and migration and diaspora studies together to shed light on transcultural identity formation and maintenance. More specifically, it seeks to ‘discover’ an explanation for why and how the cultural resources/traditions that migrants bring with them continue to have force in migrant family life. It examines the complex of ways in which homeland and hereland are implicated in migrant identities, the role of cultural tradition and family in the migrant experience, and their part in shaping migrant memories, identities and concepts of ‘home’.In examining the salience of homeland culture in migrant family life, this study addresses one of the core questions in migration theory and research, that is, why and how migrants maintain connections to their homeland.1 Much of the migration theory and research that addresses this question focuses on the role of migrant communities and institutions, ethnic networks, and transnational social, economic and political ties, often stressing the connections between kinship groups and families across borders. Some of this work, in the fields of transnational migration and diaspora studies, has placed greater emphasis on the role of ‘imagined’ connections, and on the ways in which migrants make symbolic connections to a sense of homeland as a means of supporting new identities.2 It is these symbolic connections with homeland, rather than the social, political and economic that this study seeks to investigate. This investigation will focus on music as a source of symbolic connections to homeland, and its role in the construction of family and migrant identity.The study posits that national/cultural identity is not determined by membership, nor pervasive cultural constructions of identity, but is rather a process in which people draw upon, appropriate and customise these discourses in an active process of self-making. Its guiding proposition is that national/cultural identity arises in the intersection between the ‘nation’ and the individual, between the ‘public’ and ‘private’, and is mediated by the particular social and cultural contexts in which people operate - migration being one such context.The ways in which the ‘nation’ comes to have personal relevance at the local level is explored through the interchanges between public song traditions and localised forms of song tradition. The focus of the thesis is on the role of Scottish song culture in constructing representations of national/cultural identity, and how such cultural constructions, their modes of production and dissemination interact with local practices and meanings, and how these dynamics play out in the construction of migrant cultural identity.In pointing to how the ‘nation’ is made local in the context of migration, the study challenges the idea that cultural traditions are backward looking and regressive, and frozen in time in diaspora, arguing instead that tradition and the past are actively deployed as key cultural strategies in migrants’ creation of home and belonging. In doing so, it makes a case for how collective ideas of nation are appropriated and customised at the local level, and how the cultural construction of Scottishness in song, deployed in a Scottish/Australian migrant family, acted as important referents to their identity and gave shape and meaning to their formulations of Scottish/Australian identity

Scottish midwives, 1916-1983 : the Central Midwives Board for Scotland and practising midwives

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how differing circumstances came together to help or hinder the autonomous practice of midwives in Scotland between 1916 and 1983 when the Central Midwives Board (CMB) oversaw their training and practice. The thesis includes an examination of the records of the CMB for Scotland from 1916 to 1983 and, through oral testimonies, the work of practising midwives during the same period. The thesis is divided into two parts. Part I, comprising five chapters, explores the work of the CMB from 1916 to 1983. This includes: an examination of the issues surrounding the 1902 Midwives Act which did not apply to Scotland, and the campaign for, and opposition to, a similar Act for Scotland, passed in 1915; the constitution and early activities of the CMB which the 1915 Midwives (Scotland) Act established to oversee the enrolment, training and practice of midwives; a discussion of the national concern over the Maternal Mortality Rate in the 1920s and 1930s, subsequent Government reports and legislation and the CMB’s responses to these issues; an examination of the CMB’s work during the time of the World War II, the shortage of midwives, and the changes the National Health Service administration made to midwifery in Scotland. Finally, Part I examines the last decades of the CMB’s existence, including its response to changes in midwifery management, education, practice and statute. Part II, comprising three chapters, focuses on the practice of midwives in Scotland during the period through the aspects of antenatal, intranatal and postnatal care. Each chapter uses evidence from oral testimonies of midwives working within the framework established by relevant Acts and the CMB. Part II illuminates the contrast between the work of the CMB and the world of hands-on midwifery practice

Bowdoin Orient v.77, no.1-24 (1947-1948)

https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinorient-1940s/1008/thumbnail.jp

Winona Daily News

https://openriver.winona.edu/winonadailynews/2211/thumbnail.jp

In search of a national voice : some similarities between Scottish and Canadian poetry 1860-1930

The work is a study of poetry in Scotland and Canada in the period 1860-1930, with a special emphasis on the influence of nationalism. A discussion of the problems of literary nationalism in both countries is followed by a survey of national verse anthologies which illustrates the extent to which editors allowed their critical judgment to be coloured by the popular image of the national character. The importance of the Scottish vernacular and the Canadian wilderness to the establishment of a sense of national identity are considered in relation to a general discussion of language and nationalism. Two important elements in this discussion are the role of the untutored poet as a natural spokesman for his country and the swing from conservative poetic diction to a freer use of colloquial language during this period, and this portion of the thesis contains a survey of representative Scottish and Canadian poets. There is also a comparison of the difficulty of establishing an appropriate mode of expression in a new country with the problems encountered by Scots whose traditional way of life was being disrupted by the industrialization and urbanization of their society. The study concludes with a comparison of the two poets, E.J. Pratt and Hugh MacDiarmid, whose work marks a transition from poetic conservatism to the experimentation characteristic of many twentieth century writers. Finally, it is argued that although poets and critics lamented the failures of publishers and readers to support national poetry, there was considerable enthusiasm for local poetry in Scotland and Canada. It is maintained, however, that there was too clear a popular image of the Canadian or Scottish character, and that this prevented many poets from rising above mediocrity