Chapter 2: TRIBE, PLACE AND IDENTITY.

The article presents information on various issues related to ethnicity and nationalism. The late twentieth century, with its language of "ethnic cleansing," is an epoch in which ethnicity and nationalism have come into their own. In a recently published anthology on ethnicity, the editors have written that ethnicity has now become a central issue in the social and political life of every continent. The "end of history," it seems, turns out to have ushered in the era of ethnicity. Students of nationalism also argue that ethnicity and nationalism are closely linked. The analysis of nationalism in Scotland provides a good, apparently negative, instance of this. In recent years, much has been made of the fact that what underlies Scottish nationalism is a "sense of place" rather than a "sense of tribe." In other words, Scottishness is based on living in a common territory despite clear and abiding social, religious and geographical differences. Some writers have drawn the implication of this "territorial" sense of nationality that it is a second-best definition, in the absence of a strong sense of ethnicity, the sense of tribe.