Changing Life in Scotland and Britain


Book Description

Designed to cover the most up-to-date Standard Grade requirements, these books should provide everything you need to prepare your students for their exams. There are exam-style questions and full-colour presentation throughout.







My Scotland, Our Britain


Book Description

My Scotland, Our Britain: A Future Worth Sharingis a highly personal account of Gordon Brown's Scotland, the nation he was born in, and our Britain, the multinational state that the Scots, English, Welsh and Northern Irish have created and share. Laying bare his family's ancestry over 300 years of the Union and explaining how it shaped his background, Brown charts what it was like growing up in Scotland in the 1950s and 1960s, and explains the influence of religion, education and Scotland's unique industrial structure on the shaping of his and Scotland's identity. He sets out the dramatic economic, social and cultural changes of the past fifty years and the vastly different prospects his children will face, demonstrating that a sense of Scottish national identity has always remained strong and how Scottish institutions have always fiercely guarded their independence. The referendum should not be seen as a battle between Scotland and Britain, he argues, but one between two visions of Scotland's future: one that sees Scotland prosper with a strong Scottish Parliament that is part of the UK, and one that severs all the political links Scots have with the UK. Brown puts forward his proposal for a constitutional settlement that could unite the country, and argues that in tune with Scotland's history of deep engagement with the wider world -as inventors, explorers, traders, missionaries, business leaders and aid workers -the best future for Scots is not to leave Britain, but to continue to shape it.




Betting The House


Book Description

On 18th April 2017, Theresa May stunned Britain by announcing a snap election. With poll leads of more than 20 points over Jeremy Corbyn's divided Labour Party, the first Tory landslide since Margaret Thatcher's day seemed certain. Seven weeks later, Tory dreams had turned to dust. Instead of the 100-seat victory she'd been hoping for, May had lost her majority, leaving Parliament hung and her premiership hanging by a thread. Labour MPs, meanwhile, could scarcely believe their luck. Far from delivering the wipe-out that most predicted, Corbyn's popular, anti-austerity agenda won the party 30 seats, cementing his position as leader and denying May the right to govern alone. This timely and indispensable book gets to the bottom of why the Tories failed, and how Corbyn's Labour overcame impossible odds to emerge closer to power than at any election since the era of Tony Blair. Who was to blame for the Tories' mistakes? How could so many politicians and pollsters fail to see what was coming? And what was the secret of Corbyn's apparently unstoppable rise? Through new interviews and candid private accounts from key players, political journalists Tim Ross and Tom McTague set out to answer these questions and more, piecing together the inside story of this most dramatic and important of elections.




Changing Scotland


Book Description

Changing Scotland uses longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey to improve our knowledge and understanding of the impact of devolution on the lives of people in Scotland. It is the first time that BHPS data has been used in this way. The book provides a detailed examination of social, economic, demographic and political differences, especially those involving dynamic behaviour such as residential mobility, unemployment duration, job mobility, income inequality, poverty, health and deprivation, national identity, family structure and other aspects of individual's lives as they change over time. This data provides a 'baseline' for policy formulation and for analysing the impact of subsequent differential developments arising out of devolution. The book is also an invaluable resource for establishing pre-existing differences between England and Scotland and evaluating the impact of policy initiatives by the Scottish Executive.




Families, Violence And Social Change


Book Description

“This comprehensive analysis on abuse committed in the home provides insights at both the micro and macro levels... The book combines legal and social science approaches in a way that makes it essential reading for anyone studying or working on violence-related issues.†Kevät Nousiainen, University of Helsinki, Johanna Niemi-Kiesiläinen, University of Umeå and Anu Pylkkänen, University of Helsinki. “This excellent book offers a timely intervention into debates about violence. Whilst most debates still focus on the spectacular rather than mundane forms of violence, Linda McKie uses a synthesis of legal, sociological and feminist research to show how current debates fail to deal with the violence that underpins our lives.†Prof Beverley Skeggs, University of London. An exciting new addition to the series, this book tackles assumptions surrounding the family as a changing institution and supposed haven from the public sphere of life. It considers families and social change in terms of concepts of power, inequality, gender, generations, sexuality and ethnicity. Some commentators suggest the family is threatened by increasing economic and social uncertainties and an enhanced focus upon the individual. This book provides a resume of these debates, as well as a critical review of the theories of family and social change: Charts social and economic changes and their impact on the family Considers the prevalence and nature of abuse within families Explores the relationship between social theory, families and changing issues in familial relationships Develops a theory of social change and families through a critical and pragmatic stance Key reading for undergraduate students of sociology reading courses such as family, gender, health, criminology and social change.




Scots and the Union


Book Description

This book traces the background to the Treaty of Union of 1707, explains why it happened and assesses its impact on Scottish society, including the bitter struggle with the Jacobites for acceptance of the union in the two decades that followed its inaugur




Semantics and Cultural Change in the British Enlightenment: New Words and Old


Book Description

A study of English semantics during the Enlightenment. New words 1650–1800 reflect the new middle-class culture of sociability, commerce, and science. Old mostly obsolete words illuminate the realities of working-class life, exhausting labor, dirt, outrageous sexism, magic, horses, bizarre food.







Scottish Life and Society: Bibliography for Scottish ethnology


Book Description

This major project comprises fourteen thematically arranged volumes. The aim of the Compendium is to examine the interlocking strands of history and traditional culture that go into the making of a national identity, in an up-to-date synthesis of the current state of knowledge. By bringing together information from a variety of sources, the Compendium not only provides a digest of topics, but also points towards areas for new investigation. The Compendium concentrates upon the present and the historical period and does not generally deal with prehistory, although for certain themes, such as the development of agriculture and buildings, early evidence is taken into account. Where appropriate, reference is made to foreign parallels and to the influence on Scotland of the cultures of neighbouring peoples. Scottish influence on the world at large is also taken into account, whether in relation to urban or rural, maritime or land-based topics. Material and non-material aspects of history and tradition are considered equally, at all levels of society, indeed oftentimes focusing on the interaction between people of differing social strata




Recent Books