There are strongly local commitments to place in Scotland and elsewhere which shape and direct our sense of identities. We belong to places to such an extent that accusations of ‘parochialism’ are strong.
Such commitments are reinforced in literary forms, and in cultural and jocular expressions in which person, place and nation are intertwined.
Communities are multiplexed and nuanced because they are ‘symbolic constructions’.
There is no necessary contradiction between the ‘local’ and the ‘national’.
Vital to our sense of belonging is ‘memory’, both individual and collective.
