This thesis is concerned with the special protection afforded religion in United Kingdom (UK) anti-discrimination law. Initial discussions centre on the historical and normative bases for religious liberty in the UK. These debates assess the evolution of domestic legal protection of religion and critique prevailing principles (in particular, the idea of human dignity) underpinning the variety of that protection. Attention is then focused on religious exceptions in UK anti-discrimination law and the practical extent to which they assist religious interests. It is clear that such special measures are aimed at religion as a collective; they do not enhance protection at the individual level. This deficit becomes more acute when considering the limiting effects of recent UK jurisprudence, specifically claims involving religion and discrimination across employment and the provision of goods and services. A particularly problematic trend exhibited in the case law is the courts’ approach to determining justification and proportionality in indirect discrimination. Accordingly, an argument is made for additional special protection. A duty of reasonable accommodation is proposed as a separate claim route in UK anti-discrimination law for religious individuals wishing to be excused from a rule. This is advocated in the field employment, it being noted that the field of goods and services poses challenges for the introduction of such a duty. Comparative analyses with Canada and the United States (US) expose two different models of reasonable accommodation. These are applied to high-profile UK cases featuring religion and indirect discrimination in employment, revealing how reasonable accommodation might have assessed those claims differently. It is submitted that the Canadian model provides a more sophisticated proportionality analysis than its US counterpart. This approach affords a more factually nuanced analysis in balancing the religious claim with a competing legitimate aim. It is contended that such a duty also coheres with both the theory of human dignity and the notion of equality as it features in the conceptual framework of anti-discrimination law.

A programme of field sampling was undertaken to quantify total carbon fluxes (DOC, POC, HCO3, free CO2 and CH4) from peatland catchments in Glen Dye, NE Scotland and Plynlimon, Mid-Wales. This was integrated with temporal and spatial sampling to investigate controls on contrasting concentrations and fluxes and to determine carbon sources or sinks within the stream system. Microcosms containing radiolabelled ( 14C) biofilms were also used to investigate removal of DOC from streamwater. Carbon fluxes from acidic peatlands were dominated by DOC (115-215 kg C ha-1 yr-1) and POC (8.15-97.0 kg ha -1 yr-1). In the majority of headwaters studied, DIC was exported as free CO2 (2.62-8.49 kg ha-1 yr -1). Methane-C fluxes at the outlets of catchments were <0.01 kg ha-1 yr-1. Small-scale (diurnal) temporal variations in free CO2, HCO3- and pH at the NE Scotland catchments were small compared to more productive systems; DOC showed no diurnal fluctuations. In addition, diurnal patterns were masked by marked variations in discharge. Small-scale downstream spatial changes in Brocky Burn, NE Scotland and the Upper Hafren, Mid-Wales showed that variation in climate, in particular precipitation, was also a major controlling factor on concentrations and fluxes of the different forms of carbon. However, the actual amount of carbon stored within the soils acted as an initial control on the potential DOC load within the streamwater. A peatland stream continuum linked to terrestrial carbon cycling is presented. Initially terrestrial inputs of DOC, POC, free CO2 and CH 4 dominated the upper headwaters. The soil-stream linkage was progressively reduced downstream due to autochthonous and atmospheric factors. A critical area in the peatland stream continuum occurred approximately 1 km downstream from the gaseous carbon-rich peats.

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This thesis presents a specific case study of the developing relationship between religious pluralism and national identity in Scotland by focusing on a particular high-profile group - Interfaith Scotland (IFS) - the country's national interfaith body, which has received little scholarly attention. This thesis argues that IFS represents religious pluralism as interrelated with contemporary Scottish national identity through its organisation and its literature: representing Scotland as one nation of many faiths. This discourse of unity in diversity presents a structured and limited religious pluralism based on the world religions paradigm (WRP), and is compatible with a civic-cultural form of nationalism. The WRP involves a model of religion which focuses on broad global traditions such as Christianity, Hinduism and Islam, over specific local communities and distinct denominations. These global traditions are defined by coherent, intellectual and ethical dimensions represented as closely equivalent. This paradigm is evident from the governing structures within IFS itself which represents individual religious bodies according to the world tradition into which they can be classified and affords a secondary, non-governing status to those who are not recognised as part of one of these traditions. Their world religions approach is also evident from representations of 'religions' in their literature, which emphasise broader intellectual and ethical traditions even in relation to communities outside the major traditions they recognise and the 'Non-religious' Humanist movement. This demonstrates their reliance on these categories in depicting Scotland and its population. The chapters of this thesis will explore how IFS depicts the Scottish nation and its population through the category of 'religion': the Christian majority, religious minority groups and the Non-religious. It also examines how IFS draws on civic and cultural resources to construct a common Scottish national identity compatible with their structured and limited pluralism. This civic-cultural nationalism is often banal or implicit, reinforcing the conception of interfaith relations taking place within a Scottish national framework through innocuous references to Scotland as a bounded society and the use of common cultural symbols of Scottishness to represent the 'unity' encasing that religious diversity. This can be classified as a form of nationalism because it represents the overarching secular national political framework of Scotland as supremely authoritative, as the legitimate basis for the political representation of the population rather than any specific religious identities. IFS' nationalism was especially evident during the lead up to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence during which they consistently affirmed the right of the Scottish population to national self-determination without endorsing either position. The key themes of IFS' expressions of nationalism and the world religions paradigm are related. The conception of religions as of global importance as intellectual and ethical traditions rather than specific political movements at the local level means that religious identifications do not conflict with the territorially limited authority of the nation. Through these discourses 'religious' and 'national' identities are represented as compatible and non-competitive. This thesis relates to the wider comparative study of the changing relationship between religion, secularism and nationalism in the contemporary world. It makes a contribution to the critical social scientific study of interfaith groups and the role they play in governance, processes of national integration, the reinforcement of national identity in civil society, and the construction of religious identities. It provides evidence that the relationship between nationalism and religion is not always either wholly separated or related to religious exclusivism as with certain forms of religious-nationalism, but that religious pluralism can also be related to forms of nationalism despite assumptions of their incompatibility.

This thesis considers the interrelation between gender, national identity and elite family life in Scotland between 1740 and 1790. Family group portraits painted by Scottish artists of Scottish families are examined and contrasted with English counterparts to demonstrate the evolving nature of Scottish identity as performed in the domestic sphere in the period under consideration. The principal primary sources used are family portraits, alongside letters and other archival material and contemporaneous printed texts. In the first section (chapters 1-3) the centrality of dynasty as an on-going elite concern will be established and the role that portraiture played in establishing, asserting and maintaining dynastic claims and elite status are revealed. As is shown, this concern was shared by aristocrats, gentry, the merchant and intellectual elite. The idea is introduced that the 'family group portrait' does not necessarily simply exist in one frame but may be depicted across several canvases, nevertheless conceived as a coherent whole, and shows that they were intended to interact with the building in which they were hung. The notion that conversation pieces, notable for their informal presentation of family relations, represented a shift in attitude to the importance of lineage and primogeniture will be questioned. A close reading of these portraits shows that old concerns of propriety, gendered roles and dynastic concerns remain central to the conversation piece. In the second section (chapters 4-6), the focus will move from the family as a whole to particular familial relations; nuptial, maternal and paternal. In each case, the correlation between these domestic relationships and the political affairs of Scotland, be that the Jacobite cause or Enlightenment, will be revealed. The chapter on motherhood will highlight that, while patrons commissioned portraits of sentimental motherhood, old concerns of lineage were deeply embedded within these. The matter of fatherhood is one that had been, until recently, rather overlooked by scholars and the chapter dedicated to it in this thesis highlights the centrality of paternity to elite Scottish masculinity. This thesis will demonstrate the centrality of gender to the depiction of elite family life and examine the peculiarly Scottish nature of these pictorial performances. In so doing the thesis offers a contribution to the history of gender and family life in Scotland.

This thesis investigates the concept of ‘diaspora’ as it applies to the Scandinavian settlements of Orkney and Dublin in the eleventh century. Comparative analysis identifies how key differences in the settlements’ location and make-up affected their dynamic, and even opportunistic, set of relationships with their Scandinavian ‘homelands’ and with their Insular neighbours. Drawing on archaeological and written evidence, and adopting an interdisciplinary approach, produces a more sophisticated and holistic examination of Orkney and Dublin’s political, ecclesiastical, economic, and cultural connections, while helping to reveal when our source information is concentrated in a particular area, or lacking in another. As regards politics in Chapter One, Norwegian kings were only occasionally able to exert control over Orkney, but Scandinavia had even less direct political influence on Dublin. In the ecclesiastical sphere, explored in Chapter Two, it is shown that Dublin was the site of various cults but often looked to England for episcopal matters, while Orkney was influenced by both Scandinavia and northern Britain. Turning to economics in Chapter Three, little evidence of direct trade between the international commercial hub of Dublin and Scandinavia can be found, whereas Orkney’s very location guaranteed economic interaction with Norway. When it comes to cultural matters in Chapter Four, it is argued that a hybrid urban identity may have been more significant and more prevalent than a Scandinavian one in Dublin. Unlike Dublin, Orkney remained, in many respects, on a cultural axis that stretched from Norway to Iceland. The definitions of ‘diaspora’ set out by Lesley Abrams and Judith Jesch in relation to Scandinavian settlements abroad are used as a point of reference. The findings of this thesis suggest that ‘diaspora’ is not a one-size-fits-all label, as diasporic features were not always transmitted directly in a straightforward fashion. Some Scandinavian features may have reached Dublin via England, with which it had strong connections. Even if Orcadians and Dubliners were aware of their shared Scandinavian heritage, this does not seem to have played a particularly important part in their foreign policy and decision-making. Being part of a diaspora does not necessarily mean that this was their primary affiliation.

The central tenets of both the National Health Services of Scotland (NHS) and the Unified Health System of Brazil (SUS) are universality and equity of access to services on the basis of need, free at the point of delivery. Redistribution is designed into the Scottish system. This study uses a mixed methods approach to analyse access to health care and the influence of socioeconomic factors using hip arthroplasty as a proxy measure for equity in the public health care systems of Brazil and Scotland. Methods Three studies were conducted to establish the extent to which equity is achieved in each system and the extent to which inequalities in socioeconomic status and health service supply affect equity. First, an ecological study using routine data of hip arthroplasty rates in the public sector by country and geographic region (2009/10 to 2012/13) complemented by an analysis of supply, specifically per capita distribution of beds and staff nationally and by area. Second, inequalities in access due to socioeconomic status were analysed for Scotland using the Scottish Index of Multideprivation (SIMD) in association with standardised rates; in Brazil two socioeconomic indicators (Gini and Human Development Index - HDI) were modelled (Zero Inflated Poisson - ZIP) with standardised municipal rates of arthroplasties (5,565 municipalities); and a Pearson's correlation. Finally, qualitative interviews were undertaken in both countries with civil servants, health workers and policy makers who were invited to comment on the quantitative results from stages I and II based on a script of open ended questions. Results There is an almost eight fold difference in treatment rates between Brazil (7.8-8.3/100,000) and Scotland between 2009/10 to 2012/13 (57.7-61.1/100,000). There are geographic differences within both countries. The health board areas with the lowest and highest regional rates in Scotland were Glasgow & Clyde with rates of 29.2-40.2/100,000 and Ayrshire & Arran with a rate of 60.2-88.5/100,000 respectively; in Brazil the lowest and highest regions were the North Region (2.3-4/100,000) and South Region (15.4-17.9/100,000) respectively. The two least deprived quintiles (4 and 5) in the Scottish population had both a higher utilisation (42.6%) and proportional growth in number of procedures than the two more deprived (1 and 2); quintile 3 had no consistent changes. In Brazil municipal rates showed a negative correlation with Gini (r=- .226) and a positive correlation with HDI (r=.396); the ZIP model demonstrated that for every standard deviation (SD) change in Gini, rates would be 23% higher or lower, for HDI each SD would lower or increase rates by 56%. Three major areas were identified by interviewees as explanatory factors for these quantitative results: equity of access, health systems, evidence based actions/policies. Crucially the interviewees identified GDP spend on public health care, the ability of governments to redistribute and reallocate resources on the basis of need and the distorting effect of the market and private providers including physicians as key factors; and the need for better data collection from the private sector. Conclusion Although both countries aspire to universal health care, Brazil is very far from reaching that goal due to the widespread socioeconomic differences and that the health system does not redistribute resources, staff and beds according to need. Scotland appears to be achieving universal access on the basis of need, nevertheless there are geographic and socioeconomic differences in access that need to be carefully monitored and understood. In Brazil there should be better planning and resource allocation so that public resources are redirected towards those most in need of the North and Northeast regions.

Scotland’s economic capacity to prosper independently of Britain has become a key political issue, dominating the independence referendum of 2014 and continuing to influence British politics since. Often, that debate centres on the contested terms of how we imagine or construct Scotland as an economic entity. Thus, it offers a major opportunity to study the broader issue in critical social science of how economies are “imagined”. However, to date most studies of Scotland’s economy comes from the discipline of economics or from the policy profession. This study aims to address this gap. It highlights the comparatively recent history of professional interest in the Scottish economy; asks what these professionals are “doing” or “constructing”; and looks at how this influences Scotland’s conformity with and deviance from mainstream British politics. Using Jessop’s concept of “economic imaginary”, and drawing on cultural political economy, I thus examine the current Scottish economic debate’s conditions of possibility. These include the emergence of British regional policy, the discovery of North Sea oil, discourses of competitive regions in Europe and the elective affinities between devolution and “enterprise”. I pay particular attention to a general shift in attitudes away from top-down plans to equalise growth across Britain to a focus on the “spirit” of enterprising regions. My research used critical discourse analysis to analyse 100 key documents that played important roles in or highlight key issues in Scottish economic development. I also drew on 23 in-depth semi-structured interviews with professionals and journalists. My original contribution is to examine the path-shaping role of Scotland’s economic imaginary, how choices were made and how alternative paths were closed off. By looking at one contested case, we can gain insights into broader imaginative processes in national and regional economies.

The history of paganism captivated many scholars in eighteenth-century Europe, and was brought into some of the greatest philosophical and religious debates of the age. 'Paganism' was a term that encapsulated a variety of religious beliefs and practices in the ancient and modern worlds, categorically defined through their shared distinction from the Abrahamic traditions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Although research has been carried out into the historical study of paganism in eighteenth-century England and in many areas of continental Europe, histories of paganism produced in contemporary Scotland have largely been overlooked. This thesis aims to recover this forgotten dimension of Scottish historical scholarship by examining histories of paganism written by eighteenth-century Scots. It demonstrates that these writings provide valuable insights into Scottish intellectuals' attitudes towards religion and its history in the age of Enlightenment, and illuminate the ideas and scholarly practices that underpinned them. Part One examines the first half of the eighteenth century, exploring the writings of Robert Millar (1672-1752), Andrew Ramsay (1686-1743), Archibald Campbell (1691-1756), and Thomas Blackwell (1701-1757). It is shown that their approach to pagan religious history was founded in humanist scholarship and erudition; their findings were derived from the study of ancient texts, modern works of scholarship, and reports of modern pagans. It is demonstrated that this shared methodology did not translate into uniformity of interpretation. Pagan beliefs were variously regarded as manifestations of idolatry, as reflections of revealed religious truth, or as allegories of ancient philosophical wisdom; for some, paganism was soul-destroying, for others it was a crucial support for popular morality. It is argued, however, that each author provided a conjectural account of the origins of paganism, based on their perception of the earliest ages of human history, and their conception of the fabric of human nature. It is emphasised that, contrary to prevailing historiographical interpretations of the European study of paganism, the Scottish engagement with pagan religious history did not undermine contemporaries' attitudes towards the authority of the Christian Revelation or their perception of the superiority of Christianity. Part Two addresses the second half of the century, the age of the 'High Enlightenment'. It focuses on the natural histories of religion produced by the celebrated historians of the age, David Hume (1711-1776) and William Robertson (1721-1793). These works are generally regarded as the product of a new approach to historiography, which applied the science of human nature and society to the study of the origins and development of religious belief. It is argued here that these works in fact display remarkable continuity with the objectives, concepts, and scholarly practices that informed earlier histories of paganism. In framing their accounts of the natural development of religious belief, Hume and Robertson appealed to the evidence of the pagan past. A new emphasis on the stages of social and cognitive development supplemented, rather than replaced, the use of humanist scholarship, erudition, and conjecture in the study of pagan religious history. Nor did natural histories of religion necessarily threaten the privileged status of revealed Christianity. The thesis thus problematises the sharp division often drawn between the 'early' and 'high' phases of the Scottish Enlightenment, and questions the extent to which Scottish conceptions of religion and its history were radically transformed during the eighteenth century.