In 'tribal' Scotland, we must learn to know our neighbours

APPARENTLY dynamic curriculum reforms are under way to bring our country into the global marketplace. The Curriculum for Excellence claims to facilitate pupils towards being effective entrepreneurs and responsible citizens.

As the minister for education, Fiona Hyslop, demands more from schools as promoters of Scottish history and therefore identity, some recent events have left me concerned.

Nationalism has proved to fuel violence and hatred, as the collapse of the former Yugoslavia revealed. A tribal identity provoked by a concept of nationalism may have been a contributory factor to the recent killings in Scotland of Polish people and asylum seekers.

As social scientists understand well, pre-existing social forces shape attempts by well-meaning politicians to re-engineer a national consciousness.

The Curriculum for Excellence seen in this way inevitably builds upon a somewhat insular and fragile social capital. The labile emotions associated with national sentiment could turn out to be the machine that accentuates a monster whose head was previously only occasionally visible and in undesirable ways. In other words, with the passage of time everyday life in Scotland could become less pleasant and more dangerous.

The thinker Richard Sennett in his book The Fall of the Public Man, published 34 years ago, predicted that the public sphere would be eroded by self-absorption and individualism. In such a social landscape, consensus falls away about the need to tackle incidents of anti-social behaviour that many of us see instances of daily. The interpersonal trust and respect, the vital glue of social capital, is squeezed out by this "me culture".

The other day at a Warburton's depot a fight broke out between two men over what to us was a trivial thing – the killer's workmate was late back from a tea break. The next day in Glasgow a young boy was stabbed to death in his street. One wonders if the Celtic shirt on the railings of the shrine made by his friends was relevant to his death…

Countless instances of this propensity for violence are played out with frightening regularity across Scotland.

Our industrial capital, Glasgow, has "earned" the title "murder capital of Europe". A deeper analysis of these and other such incidents as well as genuinely less serious ones reveals they illuminate changes in how people relate to others. The fact is that as we become disposed to accepting an impoverished knowledge of each other as human beings we become a potential threat to each other. The human bonds that ought to supply understanding and respect are eroding rapidly except in our technologically-held community, namely those cherished in our mobile phone directory.

Unfortunately, recent ongoing research by myself and colleague Dr Ross Deuchar of the University of Strathclyde has discovered things are even more complex and not improving either.

With funding from the British Academy, our study of sectarianism in Glasgow has revealed that in the situation that is outlined above territorial gang membership offers a "community identity", but one with very low social tolerance of others.

Moreover, the prevalence of youth gangs means that unlike the past kids no longer have any choice about deciding to join. Through living in a particular area they must become gang members. Although gangs nurture a kind of social capital and give youngsters a sense of inclusion and community identity, this is at too great a cost to not only gang members, but to the rest of us.

We have also found that the deep void and anxiety fostered by the sociological analysis Sennett gives is partly being filled through complex affiliations with either Celtic or Rangers. In other words, there would appear to be taking place a process of fragmentation both in our relations with our fellow human beings and it is being replaced by forms of tribalism. In Edinburgh, tribalism might be argued to take a seemingly more benign form, "gangs" become the private school one attended. Through attending one of the capital's many private schools that "gang" membership yields me with the "weapons" to fight my way to and win top jobs.

Our research and these wider reflections prompted the thought that it is not a logical impossibility that, returning to earlier ideas, as Scotland is nudged into the landscape of nationalism and independence, what this means for how we relate to each other as Scots and how we treat "outsiders" is validly characterised as being merely a really big gang.

Who knows if that is how others might see us as time passes. At the moment I am left wondering how the educational initiatives are challenging this culture and making for a happier, less aggressive and genuinely nice place to live. Encouraging parents and children to know their own neighbours is one place to begin this worthwhile and essential journey.

Dr Chris Holligan is a lecturer in education at the University of the West of Scotland.