This thesis is an examination of the Cistercian abbey of Coupar Angus, c.1164-c.1560, and its place within Scottish society. The subject of medieval monasticism in Scotland has received limited scholarly attention and Coupar itself has been almost completely overlooked, despite the fact that the abbey possesses one of the best sets of surviving sources of any Scottish religious house. Moreover, in recent years, long-held assumptions about the Cistercian Order have been challenged and the validity of Order-wide generalisations disputed. Historians have therefore highlighted the importance of dedicated studies of individual houses and the need to incorporate the experience of abbeys on the European ‘periphery’ into the overall narrative. This thesis considers the history of Coupar in terms of three broadly thematic areas. The first chapter focuses on the nature of the abbey’s landholding and prosecution of resources, as well as the monks’ burghal presence and involvement in trade. The second investigates the ways in which the house interacted with wider society outside of its role as landowner, particularly within the context of lay piety, patronage and its intercessory function. The final chapter is concerned with a more strictly ecclesiastical setting and is divided into two parts. The first considers the abbey within the configuration of the Scottish secular church with regards to parishes, churches and chapels. The second investigates the strength of Cistercian networks, both domestic and international. Through the exploration of these varied aspects, this study demonstrates that while Coupar maintained a strong sense of Cistercian identity and a European outlook, it was also highly enmeshed in and profoundly influenced by its immediate environment. The nature of Coupar’s experience was shaped by its locality, just as the abbey, in turn, had a reciprocal impact on its surroundings. Coupar was both a Cistercian house and a distinctively Scottish abbey.

This thesis, motivated by the paucity of previous research in this subject area, describes an attempt to better understand the extent of poverty in rural Scotland and how the factors associated with that poverty may differ in the rest of the country. By identifying factors showing association uniquely with rural as opposed to urban poverty so policy decisions on targeted rural poverty alleviation could be made. Few such factors appear to have been tested formally for their association with poverty in rural Scotland. Using data from British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) datasets I create an income-based measure to compare levels of poverty across the rurality domain for the general population and several sub-populations. I also test the levels of association that factors found in the literature exhibit with households being in poverty, entering poverty and exiting poverty in both rural and non-rural Scotland. In so doing I highlight some of the data limitations within BHPS, particularly in the number of households in the remote and rural categories of the Scottish Government rural classification system. Under the current Scottish Government rural classification system it is evident that poverty in rural Scotland is lower than in the rest of the country. However, in-work poverty and fuel poverty are significantly higher in rural Scotland, where fluctuations in household fuel prices also appear to have a much quicker impact on poverty levels and levels of workless households than in the rest of the country. This thesis identifies evidence that the current definition of rural Scotland excludes parts of Scotland typically described as rural, with the result that the high levels of poverty in these areas goes unreported in most rural poverty analysis. Areas for further research are suggested, as is an alternative regional typology that may better reflect differences in poverty related factors across Scotland.

This thesis is the outcome of my twelve-month ethnographic fieldwork among Latin Americans in Edinburgh. Using life story interviews, participant observation and online communication technologies, the research aims to explore the senses of belonging that different Latin Americans in Edinburgh have claimed at different moments of their lives and the dynamics of concurrent identities – the maintenance and reconstruction of national identity as well as the emergence of Latin American identity. It also addresses the multiplicity of reasons why various individuals have chosen to belong to the Latin American 'community' in Edinburgh and scrutinises their manifold home-making processes. Moreover, this thesis hopes to contribute to the studies on Latin Americans and to a debate regarding whether members of communities should be treated as individuals or as collective actors.

Educational provision in Scotland was revolutionised in the fifteenth century through the foundation of three universities, or studia generale, at St Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen. These institutions can be viewed as part of the general expansion in higher education across Europe from the late-fourteenth century, which saw the establishment of many new centres of learning, often intended to serve local needs. Their impact on Scotland ought to have been profound; in theory, they removed the need for its scholars to continue to seek higher education at the universities of England or the continent. Scotland’s fifteenth-century universities were essentially episcopal foundations, formally instituted by bishops within the cathedral cities of their dioceses, designed to meet the educational needs and career aspirations of the clergy. They are not entirely neglected subjects; the previous generation of university historians – including A. Dunlop, J. Durkan and L. J. Macfarlane – did much to recover the institutional, organisational and curricular developments that shaped their character. Less well explored, are the over-arching political themes that influenced the evolution of university provision in fifteenth-century Scotland as a whole. Similarly under-researched, is the impact of these foundations on the scholarly community, and society more generally. This thesis explores these comparatively neglected themes in two parts. Part I presents a short narrative, offering a more politically sensitive interpretation of the introduction and expansion of higher educational provision in Scotland. Part II explores the impact of these foundations on Scottish scholars. The nature of extant sources inhibits reconstruction of the full extent of their influence on student numbers and patterns of university attendance. Instead, Part II presents a thorough quantitative and qualitative prosopographical study of the Scottish episcopate within the context of this embryonic era of university provision in Scotland. In so doing, this thesis offers new insights into a neglected aspect of contemporary clerical culture as well as the politics of fifteenth-century academic learning.

This is an ethnographic description and investigation of life on a Scottish council estate. It is based on five unemployed one-parent life histories focusing on their experiences, knowledge and emotions in and around a local community centre. The study's expressed focal point is the Gentleman Robber community centre, within the hardtown community in the city of Dundee. The study touches on locally important representations and key issues such as: work, morality, boredom, kinship, spatiality and violence. At the tables in the community centre, the local narrative montage often focused on the enjoyment of violence or the negative marginal stigmatism faced, while, for example, collecting one's social benefits or attending the local doctor. It reflected a dichotomy of Us/Them relations linked to a local fragmentation of identity and issues of deservingness. I found that in a daily emphasis of their own exclusion the Hardtowners often voiced a feeling and embodiment of opposition through local story telling. It is a fragmented and stressful everyday life, with individual skill and network connections deciding individual status in the community. Links and networks last for as long as they are deemed useful and flexibility in trading, cooperation, networking and violence is one of the local guiding lights for success. The ethnographic narrative is described though a fragmented, contextually faithful discourse, with cinematic influences. This imparts a slice of daily experientialism found in the fragmented and stressful lives of the individuals born into and living on benefit in a Western European welfare society.

The aim of this research is to advance the understanding of the impacts of the industrial revolution on urban space during the period 1850-1900. This was a period of great dynamism with high levels of social and economic change, political radicalism and urban growth that had profound effects on the urban landscape. In contrast to much previous research on Victorian urban space, the case study settlements used are Edinburgh and Perth, Scottish burghs with diverse economies not dominated by a heavy industrial sector. The analysis uses data from a variety of sources including the census, valuation rolls and the Register of Sasines. It also draws insights from structuration theory by examining the spatial outcome of various processes in terms of the reflexive relationship between structural factors such as class and capitalism and the residential movements of individuals (agents). Three scales of analysis are used. Thus, meso-scale socio-spatial change is seen as affected by both macro-scale structures and micro-scale actions of agents. By constructing a series of maps and measures of the distribution of social groups at various times over the half century, the thesis demonstrates that socio-spatial differentiation increased markedly over the period. The processes driving this socio-spatial change are identified as the operations of the housing market, structured feeling and mobility. The detailed roles of each is examined. Together, it is argued these are the modalities which link structures and agents and are thus the proximate determinants of socio-spatial change.

The thesis is a detailed descriptive survey of the society of the Anglo-Scottish borders in the second half of the fifteenth century. The survey is divided into three sections, the first providing a background to border society, the second examining the structure of that society, and the third describing how the society was governed. As an introduction to the study of border society, the geography and economy of the frontier region are briefly described; a short survey of border towns is attempted; and the role of the Church in border society is examined, although this is mainly confined to a description of the ecclesiastical institutions in the area. In analysing the structure of border society in the later fifteenth century a division is made between, on the one hand, the levels of society, and, on the other, the interconnections which bound the border population together. The lower ranks of border society, both urban and rural, are examined in as uuch detail as is permitted by the scarcity of surviving evidence. The leading families on each side of the frontier are described and their role in border society is examined. Interconnections within border society are investigated from three aspects: the bond of kinship; connections and ties of dependency among leading border families; and relationships across the frontier. The topic of kinship bonds raises the question of the origin of border surnames, and an attempt is made to contribute to this controversy by examining the state of development of the surnames by the mid-fifteenth century. Connections between leading border families are examined under the categories of land-holding relationships, connections formed through marriage, and bonds based on employment or the more formal contracts of retainer manrent. Interconnections, so far as they existed, between English and Scottish borderers are described as a conclusion to the survey of the ways in which border society was knit together. The final section of the thesis is concerned with the government of border society. As a means of introduction, the background of the political relations between the kingdoms of England and Scotland is established by a detailed analysis of events during the half-century. Following this survey of how the two countries alternated between truce and open war during the period, an analysis is made or the terms of the truces signed between 1455 and 1502. This examination of truce terms, which were mainly concerned with frontier control, leads on to a survey of the operation of law-enforcement on the borders. The machine of law-enforcement, involving the imposition of both the international frontier law control and the national laws of the respective countries is described, and standards of efficiency among judicial officers are touched upon. Aspects of law-enforcement on the borders which are of particular interest are subsequently exanined, and both the general character and the causes of border lawlessness are discussed. In the examination of law-enforcement machinery the function of officials are described, but as a conclusion to the survey of law and order on the borders the holders of the various offices are investigated. In the conclusion to the thesis a brief generalised description is attempted of the characteristics of border people and their society in the later fifteenth century.

This thesis employs twentieth-century hydroelectric development ventures in the Highlands of Scotland as a means of exploring conflicting demands of socio-economic development and landscape protection in cherished places. In Scotland, twentieth-century landscape protection ideals were founded upon a landscape aesthetic shaped by the principles and objectives of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romanticism. The concept that the ‘natural’ world somehow existed separately from the world of humans, as a potential refuge from a rapidly industrialising European society, meant that the Romantic landscape aesthetic left little or no room for the incorporation of visible elements of industrialisation. This aesthetic has seen only limited change over time. As a result, satisfactory compromises between land-use and landscape protection have seldom been reached: a situation thrown into sharp relief by efforts to develop Highland water systems for the generation of hydroelectric energy during the period 1919 to 1980. The debate over hydroelectric development in the Highlands is instructive for a number of reasons, not least its parallels with the current focus on the placement of wind turbines in significant landscapes. Thanks to the Romantic legacy, attempts to modify landscapes as valued as those of the Highlands are fraught with complexity, even when development is undertaken in the interests of socio-economic enhancement. The thesis outlines the progression of both sides of the argument, assesses the significance of the compromises attempted and evaluates the lessons learned from nearly six decades of policymaking initiatives in this sphere. Core aesthetic ideals broadened, but did not change. Landscape protection progressed on the basis of protectionists’ ability to adjust the focus of their opposition; increased articulation of the idea of the collective ownership of important landscapes superseded the need to confront the viability of entrenched aesthetic orthodoxies.

In 1897 John Sibbald, Commissioner in Lunacy for Scotland, stated that ‘the construction of an asylum is a more interesting subject of study for the general reader than might be supposed.’ This thesis traces the development of the public asylum in Scotland from 1781 to 1930. By placing the institution in its wider social context it provides more than a historical account, exploring how the buildings functioned as well as giving an architectural analysis based on date, plan and style. Here the architecture represents more, and provides a physical expression of successive stages of public philanthropy and legislative changes during what was arguably one of the most rapidly evolving stages of history. At a time when few medical treatments were available, public asylum buildings created truly therapeutic environments, which allowed the mentally ill to live in relative peace and security. The thesis explores how public asylums in Scotland introduced the segregation or ‘classification’ of patients into separate needs-based groups under a system known as Moral Treatment. It focuses particularly on the evolving plan forms of these institutions from the earliest radial, prison-like structures to their development into self-sustaining village-style colonies and shows how the plan reflects new attitudes to treatment. While many have disappeared, the surviving Victorian and Edwardian mega-structures lie as haunting reminders of a largely forgotten era in Scottish psychiatry. Only a few of the original buildings are still in use today as specialist units, out-patient centres, and administrative offices for Scotland’s Health Boards. Others have been redeveloped as universities or luxury housing schemes, making use of the good-quality buildings and landscaping. Whatever their current use, public asylums stand today as an outward sign of the awakening of the Scottish people to the plight of the mentally ill in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The capercaillie is a rare species of forest bird which is once again facing extinction in Britain. Working pine forests are thought to represent the future for capercaillie in Scotland. However, few studies have focused on capercaillie within working forests and as a result current management recommendations are based on studies conducted within semi-natural pinewoods. Therefore study of the ecology of capercaillie within working forests is vital for the survival of the species in Scotland. The present study investigated the ecology of capercaillie, based on indirect measures of capercaillie use, within Morangie Forest, a pine plantation managed by the Forestry Commission. Monthly dropping counts were collected over a 30 month period to gain insight into the capercaillie population at Morangie Forest, and to explore the use of faecal counts as a non-invasive monitoring tool. Habitat analysis, dietary analysis of droppings and genetic analysis of feathers were further conducted to fully explore ecology of capercaillie within Morangie Forest. Results showed that the capercaillie population in Morangie Forest was subject to seasonal movements and that movements were not confined to the bounds of the forest. Substantial mixing occurred with capercaillie from neighbouring Novar Forest. In addition, capercaillie within Morangie Forest selected habitat at a radius of 50m and beyond. The population of capercaillie at Morangie Forest was estimated at around 65 individuals based on measures from dropping counts and genetic determination of individuals from feathers. Results also suggested that winter dropping counts could represent a useful tool for forest managers to monitor the size and movement of capercaillie populations frequenting their forests. In addition winter dropping counts could be used in conjunction with habitat data to plan management of habitat for capercaillie. The present study contributes towards future management strategies for the conservation of capercaillie within working forests and suggests further research priorities for capercaillie in Scotland, particularly those focused at a landscape scale.