Scottish Highland Games. Heritage, Invented Tradition and Identity Formation

Scottish Highland Games. Heritage, Invented Tradition and Identity Formation
Author: Leander Ross
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 29
Release: 2018-12-03
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 3668847363

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0, University of Passau, language: English, abstract: On 20th August 2017, the small village Wittental in the rural countryside of the Black Forest celebrated the tenth anniversary of hosting their traditional Highland games. According to a newspaper announcement the event was firstly introduced in 1999 and ever since has been organised by the local community every second year, offering sport competitions like the ‘Heavies’ as well as music, food and Scottish Whisky tasting. But why is an ancient Scottish tradition practised in the South of Germany? Is it an example of the Highland games being used by Scottish people to identify with their origins and Scotland? Or is it simply an invented marketing idea to promote a sport event of a remote Black Forest village aiming at attracting visitors through a well-known name? This paper will concentrate on the Scottish Highland games in Scotland as well as in other parts of the world. Despite the fact that they are separated from their original background and could be seen as an invented tradition by the British, there is reason to classify them as heritage as well. Albeit their hybrid form between invented tradition and heritage, Scottish people all over the world hold on to the Scottish Highland games as they have the ability to create the basis for a common identity. To explain this, in the following the ideas of ‘Heritage’ and ‘Invented Tradition’ will shortly be introduced, a historic background of the event’s development throughout the centuries will be given and all this information will be applied in an analysis of the Highland games.

Tourism and National Identity

Tourism and National Identity
Author: Kalyan Bhandari
Publisher: Channel View Publications
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2014-06-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1845414489

This book explores the role of tourism as a means to express 'nation' and 'nationhood'. Based on field research in southwest and central Scotland it shows how various historical accounts, cultural icons and images, events and celebrations create a meaning of the Scottish nation. It examines the narratives, either explicit or implicit, produced at heritage-related tourism sites and how these become interwoven with the ideology of a nation. This volume will be of use to researchers and students in tourism and heritage studies, Scottish studies, culture and identity, nationalism and national identity; as well as to tourism and heritage industry professionals and policy-makers.

Traditional Sports and Games in the Contemporary World

Traditional Sports and Games in the Contemporary World
Author: Bartosz Prabucki
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2022-01-18
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 152757928X

This book presents a captivating story about traditional sports and games in the current world. It moves from Denmark to the Basque Country and to Scotland, exploring traditional games in their local contexts. It highlights the numerous, practical functions of traditional games, showing that these games are very valuable, necessary, and actually fit the needs of our times! It offers an original perspective on traditional sports and games, providing captivating stories from personal trips to these countries and numerous practical descriptions and inspirational ideas about how to use traditional games in practice.

Highland Heritage

Highland Heritage
Author: Celeste Ray
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2015-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1469625806

Each year, tens of thousands of people flock to Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina, and to more than two hundred other locations across the country to attend Scottish Highland Games and Gatherings. There, kilt-wearing participants compete in athletics, Highland dancing, and bagpiping, while others join clan societies in celebration of a Scottish heritage. As Celeste Ray notes, however, the Scottish affiliation that Americans claim today is a Highland Gaelic identity that did not come to characterize that nation until long after the ancestors of many Scottish Americans had left Scotland. Ray explores how Highland Scottish themes and lore merge with southern regional myths and identities to produce a unique style of commemoration and a complex sense of identity for Scottish Americans in the South. Blending the objectivity of the anthropologist with respect for the people she studies, she asks how and why we use memories of our ancestral pasts to provide a sense of identity and community in the present. In so doing, she offers an original and insightful examination of what it means to be Scottish in America.

Events, Places and Societies

Events, Places and Societies
Author: Nicholas Wise
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2019-03-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 135105757X

Events can be synonymous with a particular place, helping shape and promote a location. Given the rise of the global events industry, this book uncovers how events impact upon places and societies, looking at a range of different events and geographical scales. Geographers are concerned with how notions of space and place impact people, communities and identity, and events have played a central role in how places are perceived, consumed and even contested. This book will discuss international event cases to frame knowledge around the increased demands, pressures and complexities that globalisation, transnationalism, regeneration and competitiveness has put on events, places and societies. Integrating discussions of theory and practice, this book will explore the range of conceptual perspectives linked to how geographers and sociologists understand events and the role events play in contemporary times. This involves recognizing histories and planning strategies, the purpose of bidding for an event or the local meanings that have emerged and changed in the place. This helps us analyse how events have the potential to redefine place identities. This international edited collection will appeal to academics across disciplines such as geography, planning and sociology, as well as students on events management and events studies courses.

The Invention of Tradition

The Invention of Tradition
Author: Eric Hobsbawm
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1992-07-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521437738

This book explores examples of this process of invention and addresses the complex interaction of past and present in a fascinating study of ritual and symbolism.

The Invention of Scotland

The Invention of Scotland
Author: Hugh Trevor-Roper
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2008-07-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300176538

This book argues that while Anglo-Saxon culture has given rise to virtually no myths at all, myth has played a central role in the historical development of Scottish identity. Hugh Trevor-Roper explores three myths across 400 years of Scottish history: the political myth of the "ancient constitution" of Scotland; the literary myth, including Walter Scott as well as Ossian and ancient poetry; and the sartorial myth of tartan and the kilt, invented--ironically, by Englishmen--in quite modern times. Trevor-Roper reveals myth as an often deliberate cultural construction used to enshrine a people's identity. While his treatment of Scottish myth is highly critical, indeed debunking, he shows how the ritualization and domestication of Scotland's myths as local color diverted the Scottish intelligentsia from the path that led German intellectuals to a dangerous myth of racial supremacy. This compelling manuscript was left unpublished on Trevor-Roper's death in 2003 and is now made available for the first time. Written with characteristic elegance, lucidity, and wit, and containing defiant and challenging opinions, it will absorb and provoke Scottish readers while intriguing many others. "I believe that the whole history of Scotland has been coloured by myth; and that myth, in Scotland, is never driven out by reality, or by reason, but lingers on until another myth has been discovered, or elaborated, to replace it."-Hugh Trevor-Roper

The Indigenous Games of the People of the Coastal Region of Kenya

The Indigenous Games of the People of the Coastal Region of Kenya
Author: Mwangi Peter Wanderi
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2011
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9994455567

Since the time of the early Greek, Egyptian and Chinese civilizations, games are depicted as having played a significant role in the lives of the people, similarly, games of different kinds have been a vital hallmark of peopleís culture in Kenya, and everywhere else in Africa, for hundreds of years. The focus of this research project is to identify the traditional games of the people from the Kenyan coastal region and describe how they were conducted as well as the socio-cultural setting within which they were performed, and to establish the significance of these activities in enhancing the acquisition and learning of verbal information, cognitive strategies, attitudes, and motor skills by the participants in specific and their significance to the community in general. The study also suggests ways in which traditional games could be adopted into the contemporary educational curriculum as well as for mass sports participation.