Storytelling is a constant contradiction; it is an artefact where it should merely be artifice. It carries morals, communal history and vast socio-anthropological value; it is imaginative teller-tailored fiction free from the constraints of reality. Yet, it is perhaps the most constant and poignant signifier of “nation” and “tradition”, not least for Scotland.

​Regardless of how far you carry your nationalism, this common understanding will always be intensely problematic. While storytelling is often seen as a point of origin for conceptions of cultural and national “self”, it is a malleable property, and one that has travelled globally. It is not tied to particular geography or nationalities. Storytelling itself has not confused this issue but rather it is us who have essentialised and misappropratied it in our attempts to champion the craft as valid.

​For instance, two quick yet important examples: in the 18th century, Walter Scott fell gladly into correspondence with the Grimm brothers after they contacted him to comment on how Scottish folk tales he had edited and published were almost identical to ones that had been passed down to them from German antiquity. Around the same period, James MacPherson was embroiled in the Ossian scandal, claiming ownership of poems of Scottish antiquity, with one half of a freshly post-union Britain happy to celebrate it, while the other half keen to challenge and dismiss. But of course, Ossian (and Fingal) are Celtic characters more rooted into Irish folk history. However, both Scott and MacPherson proved to reshape Scottish history and a downhearted nation’s sense of self. The hangover for this can be seenin every shortbread tin or clan tartan to line a window in the capital.

​The point I am trying to make is that whereas their successes and controversies highlighted an issue in authenticity or exposed the conceptual folly and fallacy of “tradition”, storytelling itself continued on regardless. This is because it is the form itself that is important, the relationship and interaction that it encourages. The form is comfortable being bent and twisted, modified and remade. As such, it is perfectly able to exist as contradiction.It is the fundamental values of storytelling that should be promoted and not merely their historical or cultural value.

​In this regard, our critical methodology needs to adapt to mirror the forms that it examines. We should attempt to move the focus from celebrating “authenticity”, and instead merely celebrate contribution. New emerging talents should find fertile soil freshly toiled by the progress and gains of the many Scottish folk revivals. These will prove most healthy when those rising stars the folk purists champion are mixed unceremoniously with voices that academia have no awareness of. There should be no guidelines; these contributors may work in different genres, arts or forms entirely, carrying not a tradition itself, but rather the spirit of the craft that moulded such a powerfully resonant idea in the first place. The stigmatising andessentialising nature of sentimentalised national tradition must be abandoned to allow new contributors to truly create afresh. New talent cannot, and must not, be haunted by old ghosts.

​Through establishments such as the School of Scottish Studies and the Scottish Storytelling Centre, the vast wealth of tales carried by the Scottish travellers and the revivalefforts of people like Hamish Henderson (and those in the centuries before), we have re-established the foundations to our indigenous arts and culture. Only, we have found that these are less indigenous than we may have hoped. We simply need to allow ourselves to accept this to build upon the foundations regardless. We must do all we can to ensure that we do not block the flow of progress in anxious attempts to preserve; but instead, learn, observe and create. Interaction must not be expected to necessitate ‘recreation.’

​It is essential for a Scotland, independent or otherwise, that this never be the case. The fluid and organic interactions of our arts, cultures and national identities must flow together to ensure this very fact. In the terminology of Hamish Henderson and his many followers, we must “carry stream.”

Greg Whelan

Muslims in Britain have a serious image problem. Always angry, isolationist and threatening, constantly thinking about ‘Islam’.

As one myself, I must confess it’s exhausting to be ‘Muslim’ like that all the time. Like everyone else we have other, more mundane, and private, aspects to our lives – worrying about our quality of life and the economy, getting our kids into good schools and, in the Scottish context, figuring out how we’re going to vote in the upcoming independence referendum! As such, whatever the media and others might have us believe, we simply cannot be – are not – 'angry' all the time. 
              
Hunkering down and getting on with it, however, is rarely an option. So contested and crowded is the discourse on Islam and Muslims that it is well nigh impossible to engage in it without being forced to take a side or to be pigeon-holed into one - 'good' Muslim vs 'bad' Muslim, moderate vs
extremist, Salafi vs Sufi and, of course, Sunni vs Shi'i. Willingly or unwillingly, consciously and unconsciously, Muslims and non-Muslims, people of faith, some faith, and no faith, are everyday confronted with images of a 'self' and an 'other' that is both somewhat alien and strangely familiar, like a bereaved relative you feel for but don't quite know how to reach out to. 
             
Take this music video of Happy British Muslims in April 2014, a memic homage to Pharrell Williams. On the one hand, it's a masterly response to David Cameron's 2011 assessment of "the doctrine of state multiculturalism" as being a failure. But it has had its academic critics and strident counter-video-responses. Clearly, these run the gamut from thoughtful reflection to ridiculous assertions that are downright offensive.

What is also clear is that these negative responses haven't stopped other Muslims in Muslim-majority countries from participating in the meme (see www.wearehappyfrom.com, which is compiling a running list of cities to map "the geographical spread of happiness"), which includes Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Turkey  and Iran. 
             
The Iranian case is particularly interesting not only because the happy teens were found and detained within hours of the video being put up on YouTube and subjected to a public ‘confession’ on state TV, but also because the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, also appeared to wade into the debate by tweeting "#Happiness is our people's right. We shouldn't be too hard on behaviours caused by joy."  All of the teens have since been released.

As this single issue on angry/happy Muslims exemplifies, there are competing responses to the
questions,  “What is Islam?” and “Who is a Muslim?” There is more than one Muslim story. And more than just two sides to even a single one. Indeed, storytelling in all its complexity is an integral part of the history of Muslim civilisations, from narratives in the Qur'an about Joseph (Yusuf) and Potiphar's wife (Zulaikha)  to Scheherazade and the Tales from the 1001 Nights. 

Some are the stuff of nightmares. Others, however, stories about mystical journeys, love, and art, and music, and wine, and poetry, evoking the likes of Farid al-Din Attar,  Jalal al-Din Rumi  (here’s an amazing operatic rendition with puppets), Omar Khayyam,  and so very many contemporary artists, poets, musicians, authors and filmmakers, inspire and manifest a radically different way of being Muslim, one that engages faith with intellect, addresses adversity with courage and grace, and relieves difficulty by accompanying it with humour. Let us create the space to hear them.

By Fayaz S Alibhai, @fayazalibhai

When on fieldwork, one of my participants expressed his mother’s concern with oral histories. She stated that a village was dead whenever oral histories were collected. This struck me, for I was in the middle of my own oral history collection. And it got me thinking. Does the collection of stories in our modern world mean that something is about to perish? And if so, can we change how and when we collect it, to seek not the final outcome of a story but the continuation of its unfolding?

First we ask, why do we gather stories? We gather these stories to: preserve a living memory of everyday life; understand a particular event through the stories of the people who lived it; gather alternative histories of a dominant narrative. Granted, many oral histories are used in collecting event histories like the collection of stories from the 9/11 attacks or the English coal miner’s strike. However, in many cases I have noticed that the collection of stories does come at a final point, a kind of last resort. The oral historian is seen as the person to get the story before the last people pass, or before a town is transformed or is removed, and so we end up speaking with the elderly or the last person who saw or experienced the event. Could my friend’s mother have a point?

In my research, I choose to use oral histories because they allow a broader and deeper understanding in the narratives of a rural place. They provide a non-linear and multi viewpoint approach to understanding the landscape as an assemblage of elements. In having my participants share their lives with me, I create my own narrative within the landscape. However, could I have subconsciously chosen to use it because I see the landscape at a point of decline and thus use the oral history as my best means of getting to the heart of the matter?

Stories and storytelling are important in our lives. They form the basis for so much of our identity and collective community. If the collection of these stories though is seen as something of a death sentence then perhaps we are going about the collecting all wrong. Perhaps story collecting should be inclusive, not just focus on the people who lived it, but also the ones who are living it. Focus not only on the past event, which is what the oral history is trying to recall, but also on the unfolding events that occur afterwards. Instead of a history, approach it from an oral tradition, an ever creating and making narrative of which we are all players within it. 


George Jaramillo

...And windows and doors, and books and papers, cutlery and crockery, needles and thread, hats and shoes, necklaces and rings, armour and weaponry, pots, pans, hats, gloves, trinkets, coins, stamps, postcards, mirrors, candles and all manner of ordinary objects from daily human life- if any of these very everyday objects could give voice to their existence, what many hundreds of stories might they tell? Of the many hands and lives through which they passed; of the many different adventures, whether upright or underhand; of the letters they wrote, the battles they fought, the scenes they lit and the bodies they adorned. And now, in a time more material than ever before, if our vast treasures of personal odds and ends could speak- what stories might they tell about us?

Certainly, there is a power to be felt in the presence of an object, no matter how seemingly mundane, when we know that it has a story to tell. We encounter coins upon a daily basis, and they are therefore nothing short of ordinary- but what of a coin exchanged in remuneration between an Edinburgh doctor his and murderous accomplices? Between a publisher and a soon-to-be famous author in exchange for their latest novel? Furthermore, objects are not only eternal ‘witnesses’- they frequently have a far more active and even pivotal role in the unravelling stories. What of the sword which sealed the fate of King Charles I so long ago- and changed the course of a nation’s history in its wake?

A great part of my doctorate research focuses upon the power of the object in the telling of stories- stories of time and of place, but most crucially, of people. I focus on one particularly eighteenth-century practice of material culture- the practice of antiquarianism- and through this antiquarian lens I explore the works of nineteenth-century Scottish author Walter Scott. Scott was an avid antiquarian collector himself, boasting in his expansive collection at Abbotsford House the sporran and skene-dhu of Rob Roy; a crucifix carried by Mary Queen of Scots on the day of her execution; an oatcake found in the pocket of a deceased Highland soldier after the battle of Culloden; the door of the Old Tolbooth prison and countless other relics and remains. Scott surrounded himself with these objects, most often objects providing a material testimony of a chapter of Scotland’s past, and through the contemplation of these threshold presences he entered a romantic world of Scotland’s past which he wrote into his many fictions. Indeed, amongst the pages of his poems, novels and scholarly writings are scattered the material relics and remains of Scotland’s past- and very frequently, those objects were artefacts which were in his possession at Abbotsford.

Yet I think that Scott’s enthusiasm for unravelling the stories deeply entwined in the material remains of the past is an instinct alive in each of us- from family stories and personal trinkets, to the great archaeological discoveries that significantly change our knowledge of a time and place- in each case, our desire emerges from a wish to know the story hidden away, which reveals something of the past to the people of the present. And a part of this desire perhaps too comes from the hope that one day, it will be the small and trivial, grand and monumental objects of our lives under a similar scrutiny for story.


Lucy Linforth

As part of the At Home in Scotland project a group of us will be helping run workshops for Kickstart – a summer school which provides taster sessions for 16 and 17 year olds on what it’s like to study at university. Despite having a sister this age there was something immediately terrifying about the prospect of trying to entertain a room full of teenagers.

When I first set out to plan my Kickstart session I wrote down that it needed to be “Fun and engaging. Accessible but not patronising.” I wrote this down as though this was something that was incredibly unique to communicating with teenagers. It was only upon re-reading it that I realised how bizarre my thinking had been. What sort of audience would I not stick to these rules with? Had I thought that a group of professors would want to be bored and patronised? Perhaps this stems from the fact that I’ve always thought that there’s an underlying rule that academic presentations don’t need to be engaging or accessible. Content is always stressed over delivery. This is an area where I believe storytelling is really great for thinking about public engagement. What is the point in telling a story if either no one wants to hear it or no one can understand it?

James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake are often viewed as these great masterpieces in English Literature yet they are so difficult to read that it’s amazing that there are enough people to give them so much acclaim. I think the same is often true in academic writing and presentations.

My own research focuses on cultural capital, a concept coined by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Broadly speaking cultural capital is seen as a familiarity with the dominant culture which is rewarded within the education system. Because cultural capital is supposedly unequally distributed by social class, working-class children are immediately at a disadvantage because of their relative lack of cultural capital. One element of cultural capital which I think really links to the idea of accessibility is the ability to use and understand ‘educated’ language. Using very technical and grandiose language in our writings and presentations can inadvertently snub much of our audience. I still remember arriving at university and feeling highly embarrassed that I didn’t understand this word ‘dichotomy’ that everyone seemed to be using. What was this strange term that had the potential for such a catastrophic mispronunciation?

I’ve always loved George Orwell’s ‘Five rules for effective writing’ which translates so well into rules for accessible academic public engagement. His rule of “Never use a long word where a short one will do” is hopelessly ignored by so many academics who seem to write as though they are constantly using a thesaurus (often their writing doesn’t seem too dissimilar to the time Joey tries this on Friends). Every time I read a sentence in a journal that is the length of the page I wish more academics would follow the rule “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out”. I think the most important of these rules for communicating my own research will be “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent”. Terms such as ‘cultural capital’ and ‘habitus’ are central to much of my research — but completely inaccessible without a detailed introduction beforehand.

The language we use to communicate our research should always be engaging and accessible and not “an intimidating and impenetrable fog” which Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes brilliantly describes stereotypical academic writing as (for examples of academic writing which break all of Orwell’s rules one only needs to look at The Philosophy and Literature Bad Writing Contest).     



Tom Kinney