Scottish Nationalism and a New Generation's Answer to the question of Being-in-the-World

Abstract

This article outlines the contours of an argument which will be of interest to those involved in 'community education' in contemporary Scotland; an argument which claims that, against the characterisation of postmodernism as an incredulity towards foundationalist projects, the postmodern condition offers an opportunity to articulate a systematic integralism in Scotland today. As an ethnographer my argument is that, among a social class recently empowered by literacy and affluence, the task it faces is re-thinking human being outwith the 'mirror of production' and re-thinking localities, governance, questions of meaning and transcendence, and a host of other relationships, outwith the paradigm of industrialisation and modernisation.