personal nationalism: a Scottish view of some rites, rights, and wrongs

Using the discursive notion of “rights,” I explore the association between nationalism and personal identity, posing the question of why the nation might be regarded as a compelling formulation of the self. I focus on the case of Scottish nationalism, and the work of some Scottish nationalists, in which the integrity of nationhood is explicitly related to personal and political rights. I then test the validity of other anthropological accounts of nationalism that take insufficient account of the personalized nature of the construction and interpretation of the nation. [selfhood, cultural identity, nationalism, rights, Scotland]