Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the process of future orientated imaginations of Scotland and their role in making accounts of oneself and others within the SNP. It will focus on political accounts of identity and belonging in relation to the current volatile political climate in the UK.

Paper long abstract:

Political identity and account making in Scotland has become a hot topic since 2014, reinvigorated by rapidly changing political landscapes within the UK. Scotland currently exists in a liminal political space in which the country is re-imagining itself as a pro-European state outside of the union. The SNP is having to re-imagine it's positionality in relation to Scotland, the UK and the EU. These re-negotiations of positionality are being created -in part- through imaginations of Scotland's future amongst SNP members, who subsequently transmit these imaginations to the general public, advocating for actions and political alliances based on these future imaginations of Scotland.

In this paper I discuss this process of re-imagination and re-positioning by SNP members, focusing on accounts of oneself and others within the party. I focus on the ways their daily imagination of the present and future of Scotland impacts their political identity, their positionality in the UK and Europe and their account making of themselves as Scottish in contrast to others. Drawing from traditional ethnographic work as well as CDA and participant art (inspired by Christina Torren's work) I discuss how the imaginations of Scotland in the future uncover the ways in which conflicting narratives of belonging allow SNP members to construct a collective imagining of Scotland's nationalism as 'civic'. I explore how they account for these diverging narratives through imaginations of what Scotland is, and what Scotland 'will be' once it is free from the English 'other' and their divergent narratives and imaginations of the UK.