A History of Everyday Life in Twentieth Century Scotland (A History of Everyday Life in Scotland) - Softcover

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. -- Jim Philips, University of Glasgow Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 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. -- Allan Kennedy, University of Stirling History Scotland 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. 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.

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. Key features: *Contains an overview of the material changes experienced by Scots in their everyday lives during the course of the century *Focuses on some of the key areas of change in everyday experience, from the way Scots spent their Sundays to the homes in which they lived, from the work they undertook to the culture they consumed and eventually the way they died. *Pays particular attention to identity as well as experience