ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Scottish actors have imagined Scotland’s relationship with global market systems. It highlights changes in Scotland’s economic imagination beginning with the breakdown of Keynesian national management and British entry to the European Economic Community (EEC) in the early 1970s and ending with the 2016 “Brexit” referendum. The chapter addresses the radical changes in Scotland’s imagination of itself in the world economy, particularly concerning the idea of “Europe” between the 1970s crisis and devolution. It also explores emerging anxieties about Scotland’s becoming a “branch plant” economy without a distinct class of top-level owners and how Scottish Nationalists rebranded the SNP as a pro-EU party under the slogan “Independence in Europe”. Finally, the chapter questions any intrinsic cultural link between Scotland and “Europeanness” as represented by the EEC/EU project, and suggests that globalisation/Europe can function as a national(ist) mythology.
