The Highlands of Scotland as an Underdeveloped Region

Scotland is terra incognita for British sociology. Little work has been done by sociologists on Scotland, rather than in Scotland. This situation is to be explained by a number of factors. The first is that departments of sociology are of relatively recent growth in Scottish universities. ¹ Consequently, the vast majority of sociologists working in Scotland today were neither born nor trained in the country. A second factor is the marked centripetal tendency among British sociologists; English conurbations, and above all London, draw them inexorably, for this, after all, is where the action is (and the consultancies to government departments). A third factor leading to the small amount of sociological work on Scotland is an assumption of British homogeneity; ² if all parts of Britain exhibit similar social structural features (even if some parts are lower down the evolutionary scale than others), then there is no point in going to distant parts to do research that could be done more quickly and comfortably within a fifteen-mile radius of Hampstead.