A History of Everyday Life in Twentieth-Century Scotland

Over the twentieth century Scots' lives changed in fast, dramatic and culturally significant ways. By examining their bodies, homes, working lives, rituals, beliefs and consumption, this volume exposes how the very substance of everyday life was composed, tracing both the intimate and the mass changes that the people endured. Using novel perspectives and methods, chapters range across the experiences of work, art and death, the way Scots conceived of themselves and their homes, and the way the 'old Scotland' of oppressive community rules broke down from mid-century as the country reinvented its everyday life and culture.
This volume brings together leading cultural historians of twentieth-century Scotland to study the apparently mundane activities of people's lives, traversing the key spaces where daily experience is composed to expose the controversial personal and national politics that ritual and practice can generate.
Key features: Contains an overview of the material changes experienced by Scots in their everyday lives during the course of the centuryFocuses on some of the key areas of change in everyday experience, from the way Scots spent their Sundays to the homes in which they lived, from the work they undertook to the culture they consumed and eventually the way they diedPays particular attention to identity as well as experience

Lynn Abrams is Professor of Modern History and Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Glasgow. She has published widely on Scottish gender history and was convenor of Women's History Scotland 2008-13. Her many publications include Oral History Theory (2010), Myth and Materiality in a Woman's World: Shetland 1800-2000 (2005) and Gender in Scottish History Since 1700 (2006).
Callum G. Brown is Professor of Religious and Cultural History at the University of Dundee. He is a past editor of the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies.

In any number of ways, this is a welcome and stimulating book. As one would expect, each chapter is informed by deep familiarity with both the secondary literature and a wide range of primary materials, making it a valuable jumping-off point for further research (something which is further facilitated by the ubiquitous lists of supplementary reading). Moreover, the book is heavily infused with an interdisciplinary ethos. In a number of chapters, conventional historical scholarship overlaps with sociology and cultural studies. Even more striking is the broad array of methodologies on display. -- Allan Kennedy, University of Stirling History Scotland In any number of ways, this is a welcome and stimulating book. As one would expect, each chapter is informed by deep familiarity with both the secondary literature and a wide range of primary materials, making it a valuable jumping-off point for further research (something which is further facilitated by the ubiquitous lists of supplementary reading). Moreover, the book is heavily infused with an interdisciplinary ethos. In a number of chapters, conventional historical scholarship overlaps with sociology and cultural studies. Even more striking is the broad array of methodologies on display.