A History of Everyday Life in Twentieth-Century Scotland

by Lynn Abrams (Editor), Callum G Brown (Editor)

Overview

Over the twentieth century Scots' lives changed in fast, dramatic and culturally significant ways. By examining their bodies, homes, working lives, rituals, beliefs and consumption, this volume exposes how the very substance of everyday life was composed, tracing both the intimate and the mass changes that the people endured. Using novel perspectives and methods, chapters range across the experiences of work, art and death, the way Scots conceived of themselves and their homes, and the way the 'old Scotland' of oppressive community rules broke down from mid-century as the country reinvented its everyday life and culture.This volume brings together leading cultural historians of twentieth-century Scotland to study the apparently mundane activities of people's lives, traversing the key spaces where daily experience is composed to expose the controversial personal and national politics that ritual and practice can generate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780748624317
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	02/28/2010
Series:	A History of Everyday Life in Scotland
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lynn Abrams is Professor of Gender History at the University of Glasgow Callum Brown is Professor of Religious and Cultural History at the University of Dundee

Table of Contents

List of Tables vii

List of Figures viii

Series Editors' Foreword Christopher A. Whatley Elizabeth Foyster ix

Introduction: Conceiving the Everyday in the Twentieth Century Lynn Abrams Callum G. Brown 1

1 Charting Everyday Experience Callum G. Brown 19

2 From Scullery to Conservatory: Everyday Life in the Scottish Home Lynn Abrams Linda Fleming 48

3 Changing Intimacy: Seeking and Forming Couple Relationships Lynn Jamieson 76

4 The Realities and Narratives of Paid Work: The Scottish Workplace Arthur McIvor 103

5 Being a Man: Everyday Masculinities Hilary Young 131

6 Spectacle, Restraint and the Sabbath Wars: The 'Everyday' Scottish Sunday Callum G. Brown 153

7 After 'The Religion of My Fathers': The Quest for Composure in the 'Post-Presbyterian' Self Steven Sutcliffe 181

8 Culture in the Everyday: Art and Society Angela Bartie 206

9 Sickness and Health John Stewart 228

10 Passing Time: Cultures of Death and Mourning E. W. McFarland 254

Further Reading 282

Notes on the Contributors 291

Index 293

Editorial Reviews

Here is a very welcome addition to the EUP series of volumes, edited by Chris Whatley and Elizabeth Foyster, A History of Everyday Life in Scotland... It will find its way on to undergraduate and postgraduate reading lists, and hopefully on to many other twentyfirst century bookshelves.

Journal of Scottish Historical Studies - Jim Philips

The cuiver haes a braw art-deco postcaird o the open-air soumin pool at Saltcoats, wi happy smiling fowk in their 1920's soumin costumes, beamin oot at us. It seems an eemage o a Scotland that wis luikin forrit tae a brichter an better future? Lynn Abrams an Callum G. Brown are tae be heichly congratulatit oan thier haurd wark in producing this series o buiks. Ah wunner whit the historians a hunner year frae nou wull mak o 21st century Scotland? An whether the faces o fowk o today wull kythe tae be luikin as optimistically til the future? Ah howp sae!

Lallans 78 - Rab Wilson

In any number of ways, this is a welcome and stimulating book. As one would expect, each chapter is informed by deep familiarity with both the secondary literature and a wide range of primary materials, making it a valuable jumping-off point for further research (something which is further facilitated by the ubiquitous lists of supplementary reading). Moreover, the book is heavily infused with an interdisciplinary ethos. In a number of chapters, conventional historical scholarship overlaps with sociology and cultural studies. Even more striking is the broad array of methodologies on display.

History Scotland - Allan Kennedy