ABSTRACT
As far as the discipline of sociology is concerned, Scotland is largely invisible. The two dominant modes for understanding Scotland have been the historical and the cultural, both focusing on Scotland as `past'. Much historical work saw Scotland as `over', because it had lost its formal political independence in 1707, although it had retained its key civil institutions of law, religion and education. The other mode of studying Scotland ± the cultural ± focused on language, literature and folklore, and formed the basis of another academic speciality. One problem with this division of the intellectual map was that culture has seemed cut off from political, economic and social developments in contemporary Scotland.
