Reimagining Culture: Histories, Identities, and the Gaelic Renaissance

Reimagining Culture: Histories, Identities, and the Gaelic Renaissance. By Sharon Macdonald. Oxford: Berg, 1997. 297pp. Illus. pbk. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 1 85973 985 7 (Paper); 1 85973 980 6 (Cloth)

Reimagining Culture is the latest offering from a member of the "Ardener school" of social anthropology that emerged from Oxford in the 1980s. Other noted (and controversial) studies of Celtic regions from this group have included Marion McDonald's We are Not French!: Language, Culture and Identity in Brittany (London: Routledge, 1989) and Malcolm Chapman's The Gaelic Vision in Scottish Culture (London: Croom Helm, 1978) plus his wider ranging volume The Celts: Construction of a Myth (Houndsmills: Macmillan, 1992) which has become notorious for its deconstruction of the entire notion of "the Celts." Although Macdonald's work has clearly been influenced by these scholars' approaches, her study is much more tempered and is a significant addition to the growing scholarship on linguistic and cultural revival in Celtic speaking areas.

Macdonald's research is drawn from fieldwork she conducted in the predominantly Gaelic speaking village of "Carnan" on the Isle of Skye during the mid-1980s. The primary aims of the study are to assess what emic categories the inhabitants of the village use to describe their identity, what aspects of Highland life are perceived as most important and distinctive to them, and what villagers' attitudes to Gaelic preservation efforts are. This work will have special relevance not only for those with an interest in Celtic cultures,, but for anyone who is interested in the relationship between cultural and economic regeneration.

Malcolm Chapman and Marion McDonald have previously asserted that the peoples they researched who were native speakers of a Celtic language (Gaelic and Breton) were generally not receptive to language preservation efforts, and did not want to participate in them on the grounds that speaking a Celtic language was a social stigma and a barrier to progress. However, the conclusions that Sharon Macdonald reaches are not so cut-and-dried, which to this reviewer is somewhat edifying. Macdonald asserts that the identities of the "Carnan" villagers are complex and dependent on social relations, not homogeneous. Importantly, she concludes that Gaelic speakers' responses to preservation efforts are ambivalent rather than hostile, and that individuals' attitudes to language and culture are situational and often contradictory rather than static. Macdonald's research attests that the villagers do care for their culture and do want to preserve it, but their reasons are not, perhaps, so highly politicised as those of nationalist activists. She also suggests that the language revival of the 1990s has affected local attitudes to Gaelic, and that some native speakers are now using the rhetoric of romantic cultural activism to express their feelings about the language in a way that they had previously not done.

Yet this book is not only about language preservation. It addresses wider issues of Gaelic culture as well. What is of particular interest to folklorists is Macdonald's contribution to the ongoing struggle with terms like "tradition," "community," and "culture." Her approach to these categories is challenging, in that she lets the content of them be determined by her fieldwork. She is able to provide a critique of these terms while simultaneously recognising their importance as ideas with very real meanings for people. Although it may seem obvious, she provides an important reminder that what is valued as "traditional" by outsiders and researchers may not be valued by the informants. In areas such as Skye where tourists (and anthropologists and folklorists) frequently come for performances of "traditional" activities, what the natives actually provide may seem rather incongruous. This is a particularly important concept for those who are involved in mediating or facilitating folklore performances.

Reimagining Culture is a well-written study which provides an excellent blend of theory along with the voices of the author's informants. That Macdonald brings her fieldwork up-to-date to account for the impact of the Gaelic revival in the mid 1990s is particularly helpful. Cultural revitalisation efforts are complex and evoke a wide range of responses from the communities they are intended to help. Reimagining Culture stresses that the ambivalence expressed by some members of the communities should not be interpreted as a lack of interest in seeing their culture survive. This is a balanced and level-headed report.

Amy Hale, Institute of Cornish Studies, University of Exeter

COPYRIGHT 1999 Folklore Society
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning