ABSTRACT
Scotland is a particularly appropriate unit for considering the links between place and political mobilization in the form of integration into a larger state Britain and the interplay between class and ethnic identity. Cultural nationalism was limited in popular support, even though it was prominent in most other European nationalisms. Attempts to make a distinctive Scottish culture or 'Scottishness' the basis for a political movement came only after World War I. But even then it did not strike a responsive chord in urban-industrial Scotland or fit with the 'patron-client' or 'independent peasant' politics of rural Scotland. The Scottish National party (SNP) has shifted its focus away from cultural nationalism towards the ethnic-territorial, anti- or non-Scottish bias of contemporary economic and political management. The Scottish situation with respect to political mobilization accords closely to the argument of Rokkan and Hirschman. They argue that mobilization is stimulated by sequences of events that have different impacts in different kinds of social environment.
