Autumn 2008 ORAL HISTORY 75

LAND, IDENTITY, SCHOOL:EXPLORING WOMEN’S

IDENTITY WITH LAND INSCOTLAND THROUGH

THE EXPERIENCE OFBOARDING SCHOOL

ABSTRACT

KEY WORDS: land reform;boardingschool;identityformation;women;psychohistory

This study explores the effects of private British boarding school on womenlandowners’ identity and their relationship to the land. In noting how theprivate British boarding school system and the Empire were symbioticallyrelated, it discusses how the ruling class were shaped within boarding insti-tutions that cultivated hegemonic superiority and self-perpetuating patterns ofsubjugation and domination. Boarding school ethos has played a key role inmaintaining these ‘norms’ of power as the young strive for place and identitywithin hierarchical, closed environments. Using a indepth qualitative, groundedtheory approach, eleven women in Scotland shared their stories with theprimary researcher, all of whom were ex-boarders and experienced beingremoved from their home environment usually in pre-adolescence. Almostexclusively, these women felt that their sense of identity had been damagedwhilst being formed in the process. In adulthood, they felt possessive andterritorial in arguably compensatory ways over their land, space and privacy.This possibly sheds light on dynamics of landownership that extend beyondusual considerations of economics and status. The study both commencesand concludes by noting the implications for people-land relationships in thelight of Scotland’s land reform process.

INTRODUCTIONLand reform, designated as ‘flagship legisla-tion’ in the early stages of Scotland’s newparliament, has involved a public debatefocused mainly around community empower-

ment and recreational access.1 Here we presenta local area study that seeks to explore moti-vations and ownership patterns of private landin Scotland. Our tentative argument is that adisplaced sense of childhood identity signified

by Chriss Bull, Alastair McIntosh & Colin Clark

76 ORAL HISTORY Autumn 2008

by, and perhaps, in part, a result of privateboarding school experience, contributes to thereasons explaining the use of landed power asa physical ‘marker’ of controlled, relationalidentity in adulthood.

How is this cautious hypothesis supported?During 2005, eleven key informants (allwomen) were interviewed via a semi-structured,in-depth autobiographical method. This‘personal narrative’ method is consistent withan oral history approach to data collection andanalysis and is a useful tool for exploring atti-tudes, beliefs and inner processes through ‘deep’personal reflection.2 The extent of their landownership (or that vested in their male rela-tions) varied from very small farms to acreagesincorporating tenants, housing and a castle.From oral history interviews, it was determinedthat most were from upper-middle class or aris-tocratic families in Scotland and all, as children,had attended fee-paying boarding schools. Twoin the group were not from Scottish landowningfamilies, directly, but they shared close profes-sional links with boarding school clientele andpossessed a concomitant insight into landownersocial mores. These individuals also played apivotal ‘gatekeeper’ role in creating initial intro-ductions. We have therefore included them asbeing socially contiguous with the rest of the

group, although their contribution to theevidence presented in this paper is not direct butrather contextual.

Aside from the substantive data presented onland ownership and identity, we shall alsodiscuss methodological issues involved inresearching a social group and topic thatpresents a challenge in terms of access. Often,when ‘hard to reach’ groups are discussed it is interms of the dispossessed, the marginalised, thepoor. We suggest that that the affluent, elites,the powerful, also present challenges in terms ofentry to a social world that is distant from theexperiences of most social researchers. Such oralhistories tend to be ‘silenced’, or at least retainedas ‘exclusive experience’ to be shared amongstthe family and extended family only; the hiddenpreserve of the privileged social classes. Theinterview data that has been generated will bepresented, discursively exploring our hypothe-sis. Whilst our guiding principle has been toseek explanatory power that helps understandthe tenacity of traditional landed power and canthereby inform land reform processes, a sub-texthas been to interrogate and analyse the world asseen through the eyes of often-powerfullandowning ex-boarder women. For the primaryresearcher (Bull), who gathered all the empiri-cal data, this doubled as an exploration of her

Landed Power – theDuke of Sutherland'sstatue, paid for bygrateful tenants,dominates theskyline over theDornoch Firth.Contemporaryresidents debatewhether to treat it as a relic of the pastor to blow it up.

Autumn 2008 ORAL HISTORY 77

emerging antipodean post-colonial identity, and,given that she shared a similar background asthe interviewees, it allowed the study to beconducted with a certain critical empathy – arich and meaningful sharing of oral historiesthrough personal narratives – that undoubtedlyassisted in the collection of rich and informeddata.

Whilst the oral histories gathered here repre-sent the contemporary experience of womenfrom the landowning classes, we consider thatthey also shed light on the past and on the future:on the past because the world in which thesewomen are embedded is, in many respects, a‘traditional’ one, shedding light on a way of life,a way of thinking and acting, that formed morein the feudal era than in post/modernity and onthe future, because for all that this social group-ing comprises a small minority of contemporaryScotland, it holds disproportionate power onaccount of the nation’s highly concentratedstructure of land ownership.

Land ownership, of course, impacts not leastupon land availability and this in turn affectsthe rents, mortgages and capital outlays of thepopulation as a whole, and so contributes to apicture of the present and future economy thatis conditioned by Scottish socio-economichistory.

SCOTTISH LAND REFORM IN CONTEXTScottish land is much more than economics andagriculture. As the Land Reform (Scotland) Act2003 takes effect and the Crofting Reformetcetera Act 2007 moves into place, it is clearthat many people see land as part of their indi-vidual identity and an important context, a‘space’, for enacting community cohesion.4

In not much more than the past decade, thearea of land under community ownership inScotland has risen sharply. Over one third of amillion acres (140,000 hectares) are now incommunity ownership involving more than 150communities – most of them advised and some-times financially assisted by the CommunityLand Unit (CLU) that was set up under thegovernment’s socio-economic development unit,Highlands and Islands Enterprise. This repre-sents some two per cent of Scotland’s land area.5

Apart from the Stornoway Trust, which wasendowed with 64,000 acres in 1923, ownershipthrough community trusts in Scotland is a newphenomenon. The bulk of privately owned landhas traditionally been held by a tightly concen-trated and tightly connected landowning class.6

Culturally this may be understood from anindigenous standpoint as being highly Anglicised– a perception that is often linked to schoolingand not necessarily to birth.

Dunrobin Castle,Sutherland – thefocus of some of the most brutal 19thcentury HighlandClearances.

78 ORAL HISTORY Autumn 2008

Contemporary studies suggest that, apartfrom the new trend in community trusts, thepower and control of the landed classes has notgreatly diminished in recent years. Nearly two-thirds of private Scottish land continues to beheld by just 1,000 owners.7 It is not surprising tolearn that these owners are drawn almost exclu-sively from the aristocratic and upper middleclass strata of society, with some nouveau richeand corporate investment holdings interwoven.For example, of the top ten non-public landown-ers in Wightman’s seminal 1996 survey, nine ofthem, accounting for 1.2 million acres or sixpercent of the Scottish landmass, are individuals(or the corporate entities representing theirfamilies) deriving from British upper class back-grounds. The Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc.(Scotland) Act 2000 and the Land Reform (Scot-land) Act 2003 may have outwardly movedtenure into the Twenty First Century, but feudal-ism’s residual power structures remain largelyintact. People living in rural communities expe-rience such structures and their day-to-dayprocesses in all manner of political, economicand social impacts. For example, current landdistribution and use implies a continual transferof wealth (in the form of rents, resource accessand capital payments) from relatively poor torelatively rich. In considering the progress ofScotland’s land reform, it is important to holdin mind Lord Sewel’s words in the introductionto the January 1999 Scottish Office ‘Green

Paper’ on land reform: ‘But it is crucial that weregard land reform not as a once-for-all issue butas an ongoing process. The Parliament will beable to test how this early legislation works and… will generate a longer-term agenda for furtherlegislation’.8

New laws on their own, however, are notsufficient to sustain deep-rooted change in theface of tightly controlled economic interests withregard to land. The conduits into which legisla-tion can flow first have to be dug so that theycan guide subsequent political streams. At thedeepest level, such work is more than just polit-ical. It has been argued that the processes mustalso involve a cultural ‘shift’ aimed at addressinginjury to the ‘soul’ or ‘psyche’ of the nation.9

Here unjust land tenure is understood as beingonly an outer manifestation of what, in libera-tion theology terms, is recognised as an inner‘domination system’ – that is to say, the tendencyof one group to dominate another through suchdistinctions as class, colour, ethnicity, language,religion and gender.10 Oral evidence of this canbe heard in radio broadcasts from the early daysof modern land reform in the 1990s that arearchived on the web.11

A key stated government aim of land reformin Scotland is to achieve, ‘increased diversity inthe way land is owned and used … which willlead to less concentration of ownership andmanagement in a limited number of hands … sothat local people are not excluded from deci-

A typical ‘bighouse’ andassociatedbuildings on aScottish Highlandestate. Note thewhitewashedbuildings, and thelong straight linesthat demarcatemonocultural landuse and encodethe lines of alawyer’s pen.

Autumn 2008 ORAL HISTORY 79

sions which affect the lives of their communi-ties’.12 This all implies elements of democracy,social inclusion and some redistribution of Scot-land’s nineteen million acres amongst her fivemillion people (a per capita average of twohectares, or three football fields). Accordingly,it is incumbent upon policy makers and commu-nity activists, amongst other interested parties,to understand not just the dynamics of commu-nity transformation such as we now see happen-ing in places like Assynt, Eigg and Gigha, butalso, why it is that the existing landed classesgenerally resist such democratic, socially inclu-sive actions. In this study we acknowledge theprimacy of economic explanatory power.However, we suggest that new light needs to beshed on the social – the actual psychology ofownership – and that it is not sufficient to rele-gate this to the periphery in accounting for thefascination and ‘need’ for the possession andmaintenance of landed estates. That is, weargue, land ownership – for those interviewed –appears to offer a constructed sense of ‘home’to those whose emotional ‘attachment’ needswere significantly disrupted during childhood.As private boarding school is a ‘normal’ markerof identity amongst the landed classes, and onethat is often calculated to inculcate a sense ofclass-segregation in the children of the elite, wehave chosen to focus on this as a point of entryfor our study.

LAND, IDENTITY AND BOARDINGThe experience of being sent away to boardingschool marks, for better or for worse, a majorchange in a child’s sense of ‘home’. There existsa small but growing body of literature thatspeaks to the consequences of this in terms of‘exile’ from home, extending into betrayal orexile from one’s inner sense of self and identity.13

Drawing on this, we postulated (in a tentativeand cautious fashion) that adult oral historytestimonies of childhood boarding experiencemight offer powerful insights into the little-understood realm of landowner and landedclass motivation.

From a thorough review of the research liter-ature, it became apparent that there is a dearthof studies on whether and how boarding educa-tion impacts upon identity and territorial rela-tionships. Given the history and prevalence ofsuch schooling systems, especially in the UK,this not only surprised us but fascinated us –why is no one researching or writing about suchpractices and experiences? The closest we havefound is Rich14 and Okely15 who variouslyexplore the symbiotic relationship between‘public boarding schools’ and the ruling elite,including the role that ‘public’ schools had intraining colonial administrators under the

Empire. As one public-schooled reviewer of anearly draft of this paper quoted his old head-master, ‘Others were made to serve; you wereborn to rule’.16

Duffell17 and Schaverien18 make seminalcontributions to the literature, focussing on thepsycho-socio-emotional effects of boarding.They explore how the boarding experience canhamper a child’s and subsequent adult’s abilityto develop authentic intimacy and trusting rela-tionships. Duffell, a psychotherapist who haspioneered the field of ‘boarding school survival’,portrays the boarding ‘community’ as beingshrouded in a ‘culture of silence’. He maintainsthat the painful exclusivity of the experience andthe privileged mystique of these institutionssilences the voices of (ex)boarders, inhibitingthem from facing up to the consequences – thelived reality – of their experience. The mythical,romantic notion of boarding school that hascharacterised the privileged British social classesfor centuries becomes periodically re-energisedand re-legitimatised through such literary genresas the Harry Potter tales – themselves initiatedby Harry’s escape from traumatic home circum-stances. The social commentator GeorgeMonbiot added his voice to the debate in TheGuardian in 22 January 2008.19 Drawing on hisown schooling experience and Duffell’s work, hesuggested that British public schools haveproduced an ‘unhinged ruling class’. Themassive blog response testified to the strengthof feeling that this debate provokes from bothsides.

METHOD, APPROACH AND ‘THE BREED’ We recognised that the potential sensitivity ofour topic, as well as the position of our infor-mants, favoured gathering research datathrough a qualitative, in-depth interviewapproach rather than a more quantitativeapproach.20 As mentioned above, our preferencewas to search out women’s personal narrativeson the issues of boarding experience and landownership using an oral history frame of refer-ence and approach. We deemed that such anautobiographical route into the data wouldproduce the most fruitful avenues of enquiryand search out the most telling and informeddata, connecting the key research themes ofland ownership, women’s identity and boardingschool experience. As Bottomore and Brym21

surmise: ‘There is a distinct upper class inBritain, a class whose privileges derive bothdirectly and indirectly from the unequal owner-ship of capital, and a class which takes enor-mous pains to control entry into its own ranks’.

These barriers are both ‘outer’, in terms ofthe ‘hardware’ of family (‘blood’) and wealth,and ‘inner’, in terms of such social and psycho-

80 ORAL HISTORY Autumn 2008

logical ‘software’ as linguistic accent, behav-ioural shibboleths, and postural bearing alongwith general ambiance. In sum, they comprisethe ‘hexis’ and ‘habitus’ by which, according toBourdieu, distinction is recognised andsustained.22 Where new blood is accepted, moresand values must normally be homogenised, thus:

The test of membership has been the will-ingness of the newly arrived to socialisethemselves into existing attitudes and prac-tices, and to transmit both those values andtheir privileges to their offspring. The publicschools and to a lesser degree, Oxbridge,have acted and continue to act, as thecrucial mechanism for the production ofthose values and for the transmission of thatprivilege.23

In his analysis of English identity (in whichwe can broadly include upper class AnglicisedScots who comprise the traditional landowningclasses), Jeremy Paxman draws out thesehomogenous defining qualities. He cites ‘Sapper’(H. C. McNeile), the creator of the fictional butarchetypal pulp hero, ‘Bulldog Drummond’,who writes in one of his novels: ‘He belonged, infact, to the Breed; the Breed that has alwaysexisted in England, and will always exist to theworld’s end… They are always the same, andthey are branded with the stamp of the Breed.They shake your hand as a man shakes it; theymeet your eye as a man meets it’.24

Paxman adds, ‘Imitations of the Breed weremass-produced by the private schools’.25 Hecorroborates a wider impression that we areexamining, in fact, are deconstructing, a powerelite who, as suggested earlier, are not onlytightly concentrated and tightly connected, butalso, tightly patrolled in terms of their identityhomogenisation. To assure differentiation from‘the other’, Okely26 describes how British publicschools ‘are almost invariably set in rural areas,distant from urban concentrations, the threat-ening proletariat and metropolitan culture’.Okely relates her experience at boarding schoolthat where any ‘minority girls’ – such as schol-arship students – displayed differences, they‘were ridiculed and mimicked until repressed.’

This may be no different from the classhomogeneity found amongst many other socialgroups. But what makes that of the landowningclass distinctive in our view, as well as being amatter of wider public interest, is the asymmet-ric power over other people’s lives that theirsocial position can command. Boarding schoolsmay claim that the picture just portrayed repre-sents a characterisation that is today outmoded.Whether or not that is true goes beyond thescope of this study. But it is undoubtedly true

that the majority of today’s landowners wereeducated under past norms, and these are whatmay influence the mores of contemporarylanded power. Indeed, it would be disingenuousto simply react to such ‘historical’ personal testi-monies by stating such narratives are past theirsell-by date; an ‘oral history’ that no longerexists.

Being sent away to a private boarding schoolis therefore about more than ‘just’ education. Itis, arguably, both a signal of separation from thefamily home, and a process of conditioning intothe separate and separating norms of a classshaped by the power of capital. If it is valid toview this reproduction of ‘the Breed’ as being,in part, a homogenising process of identity forma-tion, then we have a situation that, whilst prob-ably not amenable to quantitative socialresearch, may be open to qualitative techniquesand in particular, the ‘snowballing’ samplingapproach of ‘grounded theory’.27 Snowballing isa way of working with informants where onecontact leads to another in a process that iscontinued until the yield of new informationreaches ‘saturation’ in sharply diminishingreturns. Such diminution determines ‘sample’size and, arguably, permits working with whatmay be necessarily small samples (albeit backedup by literature review and other data collectionmethods that are both consistent with, andreflect, the oral history manner of approach tosuch methodological questions).

OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO ENTRYAs an ex-boarder from a land owning family inNew Zealand, the primary researcher hadexpected that her strong ties to boarding andland ownership would encourage women inter-viewees from similar Scottish backgrounds toshare their oral history narratives with her. Theearly stages of the data gathering soon dramat-ically challenged this assumption, perhaps shed-ding light on why this area is under-researched.Both public information, such as Who’s Who inScotland,28 and personal contacts were used toidentify potential interviewees. However, theyor their gatekeepers, whilst initially eager to getinvolved in the research, typically – and rathercuriously – changed their minds once the board-ing school connection with land ownership wasraised. For example, in a phone conversationwith a high ranking member of the ScottishRural Property and Business Association(formerly The Scottish Landowners Federation),keen interest in people/land relationships evap-orated as soon as the question of boardingeducation was verbalised: the exclamation, ‘Oh,you’ve put another filter in – I’m not sure I willbe able to assist you now,’ ended any furthercontact.

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Similarly, a personal contact – a lawyerwhose firm factors for a number of female estateowners – was initially enthusiastic to introducehis clientele to the study. However, this connec-tion terminated with a subsequent formal e-mailsaying, ‘A Senior Partner of the Firm is uncom-fortable to participate in involving Clients of theFirm given the potential political overtone…’Other contacts similarly evaporated, usuallywarmly wishing the study well but declininginvolvement. A few issued blunt cut-offs like,‘Quite frankly, I’m not interested’. One incred-ulous Aberdeenshire aristocrat thought that theproject would be ‘unlikely to impress’ Bull’sacademic superiors. She suggested that it wouldbe more useful to study crofters – this being arather familiar tactic of elites, shifting the focusaway from themselves to others – retaininginformation to themselves and their extendedclass networks. The primary author quicklyrecognised these barriers to entry. They paral-leled those of her own membership, as a Pakeha(i.e. white) New Zealander, of a group that simi-larly projects a largely unconscious, self protec-tive wall of silence around their landed powerand consequent unacknowledged privilege.

However, eventual breakthrough occurrednot in Scotland, but in England. A public schoolprincipal introduced the primary researcher toanother female principal at a prestigious Scot-tish girls’ public school, who, passed her on tothe senior housemistress. With alarmingcandour the housemistress opened her dialoguewith the statement: ‘People who haven’t been toboarding school, do not and can not, understandwhat boarding is like’. The exclusive andsecluded nature of these sub-cultural institutionswas openly acknowledged, and the wall, oncesurmounted, allowed in the remaining researchtime for a swift snowballing of interviewees inScotland – all of whom had left their familyhomes between seven and eleven years of age.The oral histories quickly emerged, and camealive, through the personal narratives that wereshared and reflected upon with the primaryresearcher.

All research interviewees had ‘a significantrelationship’ to Scottish land either throughdirect ownership or close family association.Women were chosen because of the primaryresearcher’s interest in eco-feminism and postcolonial praxis, drawing parallels between thesubjugation of those considered ‘close to nature’– women and indigenous peoples – by westernpatriarchy and the scientific revolution. Thissymbiotic relationship of ‘white’ patriarchaldominance and British ‘superiority’ birthed apolitical and structural reality that legitimisedwhite man’s entitlement to, and dominion overthe earth’s resources, whilst alienating ‘other’

inhabitants from equitable access.29

Boarding schools provide a ‘fast track’ intoan imperialist and paternalistic system of subju-gation/domination through the employment of‘divide and rule’ colonial praxis – divide childrenfrom their familial base and conquer their indi-vidual will.

Evidence of ontological angst caused bybeing sent away to boarding school might there-fore be more homogenously present amongstlandowning women boarders than amongsttheir brothers who, often, sat on the security ofprobable future patrilineal inheritance to land.Whilst we did not set out to explore this as partof our primary argument, we were aware that asan added possible homogenising factor, it mightauger for more rapid data saturation from ourachievable sample size.

When interviews did finally take place theywere conducted over a wide and usually remotegeographical expanse. Eight were face-to-facewith three undertaken by phone. Consistentwith principles of oral history andaction/participatory research, Bull integratedher questions with inquiry into her own identity– the sharing of personal narratives.30 Thisallowed her to tell others, in effect, ‘I want tofind out about this, because it affects me too’.Data was paraphrased where necessary andwritten down either during or shortly after eachinterview. Key points – we called them ‘indica-tive statements’ – were discerned and later clas-sified through the development of a codingframe that reflected emerging ‘generativethemes’.31

The method of data collection, sorting andreporting was agreed with participants prior totheir involvement, including acknowledgmentthat the methodology deviated from a typicalfeminist paradigm32 because transcripts were notproduced for participants. Respondents wereagreeable because findings were reported in

The estate agent'sbochure producedfor the Isle of Eiggwhile it was stillprivately owned in1996. Note thename of one of theselling agents –Vladi PrivateIslands, owned bythe Canadian-basedFarhad Vladi.

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narrative style using projective profiling (repre-senting numerous ‘typical’ situations in anabstract story), rather than as case studies, thusassuring their anonymity.

All interviewees consented to the use of theirmaterial for possible publication. Manydescribed the experience as having been valu-able for their self-understanding. One woman,the first boarder in her middle class family,remarked that she felt ‘a social responsibility totell my story for this research’.

BOARDING AND PARADOX OFPRIVILEGEBoarding schools, by their very existence, sepa-rate (pre)adolescents from the immediate famil-iarity and security of home, whilstsimultaneously bonding the future privilegedclasses. Our literature review highlighted atension between the emotionally austere exigen-cies of boarding, and modern child developmenttheory. For example, Bowlby’s33 influential‘attachment theory’ stresses the child’s need forintimate environmental and emotional security,but boarding environments often encourage oreven demand competitive and strategicresponses to a full-time institutional life. Thisadvances the notion that adolescents ‘learn tostand on their own two feet’ and that boardingis therefore ‘the making of them’.34

A minority of those interviewed in this oralhistory study spoke positively of such ‘privilege’.These reported that, ‘boarding school helpsbuild independence’; it, ‘had quite a nice atmos-phere – always someone looking after you’; and,‘I wouldn’t change it if I had it again’. However,the majority of our interview responses contra-

dicted these comments. Here paradox sat at thecore of privilege. For these, a generative themewas the challenge of being faced, very suddenly,with the multiple demands of full-time institu-tional living at a very young age, without therelative safety of home – of ‘Mum’ – to retreatto. It was a harrowing and often traumatic expe-rience. The paradox was that your parents weredoing this supposedly because they loved you,wanted the ‘best’ for you, but it exiled you fromthat love and family support.

One middle class, thirty-something intervie-wee “Sue” , the first of her hotel-owning familyon the West Coast to attend public school,explained during our interview in her home thatshe had been excited by being packed off toschool equipped with a trunk of new parapher-nalia, said: ‘I got worried when I saw the twentyfoot wall around the school... [and] seeing myparents drive away. I remember feeling verysmall’. Another, Carol a woman in her forties,interviewed in an Edinburgh café, related thatshe was from a family who owned enough farmsso that each of her brother’s could inherit one.Carol said, ‘It [boarding school] becomes totalsurvival – there was no one looking after you’.Morag interviewed on her indigenous home-land of Argyll said she ‘developed a photo-graphic memory for all the stones, rivers andtrees between the school and home – so I knewhow to get home’.

Only two women dissented from this senseof privileged exile. Elizabeth, an older woman,interviewed in her large farmhouse near Edin-burgh, came from a sizeable farm in Fife – she‘loved boarding and becoming a city girl’. She,however, avoided direct answers to questionsabout emotional aspects of boarding and whenlistening to the primary researcher’s own expe-rience of displacement concurred with, ‘Yes. Iunderstand what you mean’. Fiona, a woman inher forties who now owned an eco-healingcentre near Edinburgh (where the interviewtook place), said that she wouldn’t change herboarding experience, though she acknowledgedthat her sense of security had relied on ‘havinga gang around me’.

A CLASS APARTMost of the women described how hierarchicalinstitutional living invoked survival tactics,essentially ‘coping mechanisms’. Most describedhow they had developed strategies to avert asense of powerlessness felt in the face ofemotional uncertainty. Their top priority was tosecure safety and place in the inner sanctum ofthe school’s peer groups. Statements indicativeof this included, Carol: ‘Peer relationships atboarding school were very emotionally tiringbecause they can change at any moment –

Portrayal by theDaily Mail oflanded power'sfears on the passingof Scotland's landreform act in 2003.

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you’re very vulnerable’; Margaret (interviewedby phone), is of retirement age from a militaryfamily, raised in a castle in eastern Scotland,said: ‘It was not a good education ... any indi-vidualism was thoroughly repressed [by pres-sures towards authoritarian and peer groupconformity]’; and, Fiona from the healing centresaid: ‘I had a double life between home andboarding school – I played very different rolesfor each’.

Whilst this need for a chameleon identitymay be interpreted as ‘the making of them’ – askill at adjusting to life’s variables – many inter-viewees challenged the assumption that board-ing had created adaptability in them. Speakinginitially of international students, the Englishboarding school principal said, ‘It divorces themfrom their own culture and it may not be easyto reintegrate’. Her additional remarkssuggested that socio-cultural severance anddisplacement was also strong for studentsboarding within their own country. For example,many noted that childhood friendships wereunable to cope with the socio-cultural dividethat grew between those who left to board andthose who stayed at home. The schools super-imposed their own social norms of a tightlyconnected elite group. As the house mistressfrom the prestigious Scottish girls’ school put it,‘The public schooling community is very wellknown to each other’. Others spoke of‘emotional separation’ from those back home,or the creation of ‘an educational and economicgulf’, not least ‘because of the expense there areno students from low socio-economic back-grounds’.

MANAGED HEART AND FALSE SELFAware of their supposed privilege and place insociety, many of the women said that they feltashamed and embarrassed to admit that theyhad found boarding school emotionally andpsychologically demanding. Some said they feltbetrayed by their parents for sending them away– a pedagogical imposition that had been ‘fortheir own good’.35 Some felt it to have been abetrayal of their core identity, resulting in theneed to cultivate a sense of self – a false ordouble self – that was strategic, or even, manip-ulative, in order to survive institutionalisation.Statements indicative of this included, Carol:‘My armour at boarding school was ‘happy golucky’; ‘I played the clown’; Morag: ‘Art becamemy rebellion’; and, ‘I worked hard academicallyas my refuge’.

Sue said that she was kept from attendingclasses for her first two weeks at boardingschool due to her ‘hysteria’. She said, ‘Dad hadtold me that if I needed to cry to do it openly,but that weakness was not rewarded’. When her

father himself cried in response to her own upsetover the phone one day, she felt so guilty thatshe ceased sharing her pain in his or others’presence. Sue added: ‘It’s a shame to lose thatvulnerable part of yourself,’ adding thatthroughout that first year, ‘because Dad keptsending me back [to boarding school] regard-less, I became one of the girls crying [in secret]in the bathroom with the taps running’.

Dumbing down one’s voice became, inOkely’s words, the ‘duty paid ... to the parentswhose financial contribution is translated as loveand sacrifice for the child’s greater good’.36

Indeed, several women described varyingdegrees of ‘frozen awareness’ – conscious yetemotionally cauterised in the soul. Outwardlythese became both victims and perpetrators ofthe so-called ‘stiff-upper-lip’. This holding ofemotional life under tight ego/cognitive controlwas not inconsistent with what some of theschools aimed to inculcate – thus interviewee’sstatements, Sue: ‘I’m a super-achiever now’ or,Morag: ‘I know I can cope with anything’. Andyet, with some women the forced character ofthese very achievements undermined them, as ifto clutch defeat from the jaws of victory: Sue:‘As an adult I have a burning desire to copealone – and an inability to do it’. Again, Morag:‘I feel like a fraud now. Whose life am I living?’And the woman who married and became anisland laird – Lucy – said with resignation in hervoice: ‘I have blanked out a lot of memoriesfrom school’.

Portrayal by TheGuardian of landreform agitation thatcontributed to thepassing of the LandReform (Scotland)Act 2003.

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Women’s awareness of the cost of theireducation, and the parental sacrifices made insome cases, engendered a “commercialisation offeeling” that, as Hochschild37 puts it, constructsa ‘managed heart’. While Hochschild’s studyfocuses on the gender-laden, emotional work offemale flight attendants, the same concept maybe similarly paralleled with the way that thefemale boarder, by implication, is trained in theemotional work of projecting acceptance andacceptability to all that is external to her.Hochschild38 refers to this as ‘deep acting’. It isexpected that such acceptability – sensibility –will allow the woman a smooth transition fromthe dominion of her father to her futurehusband. The taming of the inner, emotional,female wilderness to secure a portrayal ofrestrained, correct etiquette buys socio-economic safety now that she is, seemingly, in aposition to restore her attachment needs as sheis re-placed onto her marital land.

The literature suggests that where the psycheis forced to ‘split’ in this way, the ‘true self’ of achild’s ‘primal integrity’ becomes obscuredbehind a controlled and often dysfunctional‘false self’.39 Borderline and narcissistic charac-ter styles and even personality disorders mayresult, as joyous spontaneity, creativity and thecapacity to sustain authentic loving relationshipsall become compromised in this playing out,metaphorically speaking, of the ‘white man’sburden’ – the paradox of privilege.

INTERGENERATIONAL PERPETUATIONInterviewees manifested the depths to whichthey had compartmentalised and split offpainful material as they commonly appendicedtheir own personal oral histories with reflexiveaccounts about how they subsequently, never-theless, sent their own children away. The testi-mony and admissions were telling. For example,East Scottish aristocrat, Margaret testified: ‘Isent my daughter to boarding school because itwas fashionable and so she would make goodfriends… But it was the wrong school for thewrong girl and she has never recovered’. Thissame woman had earlier said that her brotherhad been ‘bullied terribly at Eton’ and, in herview, is still very wounded by his ordeal.

Aristocrat turned organic farmer, Barbarasaid, ‘My husband and I both despised ourboarding experiences but sent our three boysaway for their last two years. We almost didn’tsend the youngest off but the other two said,“You have to put him through what happenedto us.”’ Barbara, speaking in detached, thirdperson, acknowledged she had been removedfrom her first boarding school ‘after an appar-ent suicide attempt’.

Perpetuating the experience on the nextgeneration of children was usually rationalisedas being for socio-economic enculturation;‘matched’ and continuing oral histories thatensured financial status and class power. Some,however, were still in the process of contem-plating secondary education options for theirchildren. The Hebridean laird, Lucy, originallyfrom Irish small-holding roots, adopted into theBritish upper class, had been removed as a childfrom her boarding school ‘because my schoolwork wasn’t happening’. She had failed to adjustand cope with the cliquey inner society thatdisallowed her entry. Yet, Lucy still believed that‘the social aspects of boarding school are better’than those of the local high school that her chil-dren would otherwise attend on their island.Similarly, Sue, who had cried silently with thetaps running said, ‘The local school isn’t going tobe good enough for my boys’. Both of thesewomen, borne outside the landed guild buthaving endured the necessary hurdles to ‘marrywell’ into the desired class, refused to lose theirhard won membership by sending their ownchildren to a government funded school.Despite this, Sue admitted that her own board-ing experience resulted in her having ‘spent twoand a half years in cognitive therapy working onissues about ‘departure’ – goodbyes, fear ofbeing alone, fear of dying or failing at anything,’and she remains in a state of self-confessedfragility. Bottomore & Brym’s40 ‘test of member-ship – the transmission of values and privileges’through the mechanics of boarding and classsuccession, completes the circular journey.

The tendency of ex-boarders to perpetuatethe ‘no pain no gain’ trauma on their own chil-dren is widely recognised. George Monbiotdescribes it as, ‘Britain’s most overt form ofchild abuse [that] offends no fewer than elevenarticles of the UN convention of the rights of thechild, which Britain signed in 1991’. And yet, heconcludes, ‘Our silence on this issue is aston-ishing’.41

ACCENT – DISTINCTION WITHDISCRIMINATION Even the gain that comes from the pain is opento question. Consider a ‘cultured accent’ as oneof the most outwardly evident marks of privateschooling. Morag, who had returned to herindigenous childhood place said, ‘My poshpublic schooled accent is frustrating – peopledon’t think I’m a local, but my roots are firmlyembedded here’. Here the split sense of self –even when ‘authentic’ in terms of space andplace – is deemed inauthentic due to aconstructed, shapely voice. Margaret from thecastle testified, ‘I had a privileged childhood – a

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posh accent and posh education – but it wasterribly insecure’. And Barbara remarked, ‘I findI am discriminated against by local farmers forbeing a woman [farmer] and for having a poshaccent ... they won’t help me train my dogbecause that means they’d have to shout at me.Because of my aristocratic background I thinkthey can’t bring themselves to do it’. In otherwords, social class differentials lead to block-ages in flows of relationship. At the end of theday, these can leave both sides feeling awkwardand the rich, impoverished, as is captured, forexample, in the expression, ‘poor little rich boy’.

The public school accent becomes anemblematic symbol that is both ‘a sign and aweapon’42 – the acquisition of a prolonged initi-ation rite rewarded with ‘a passport of privi-lege’.43 In Scotland such an accent, arguably,makes a ‘Brit’ out of a Scot. Indeed, the primaryresearcher had to check with all the publicschooled informants that they were not Englishto reassure her untrained, Antipodean ear.

PRIVILEGE, NATURE AND SPLENDIDISOLATIONA resounding generative theme was many of thewomen’s acknowledgment of being sociallyisolated adults. The island laird said, ‘I don’t seemy friends much now – I look after the animalson the farm’. Many noted that they, ‘… don’tmake intimate relationships’ or have many closefriends and when they did ‘make appearances’

at gatherings of ‘the membership’, it wasperfunctory. Most made statements revealing ofthe managed heart like, ‘I don’t trust groups’ or‘I avoid social gatherings as much as possible’.The aristocratic farmer, Barbara, noted withpainful insight, ‘I hide behind my animals andmy commitment to the farm – I think havingsuch an affinity with animals is about having adefect in one’s personality – its compensatingfor a lack of human relationships’. Althoughthese women felt that boarding school was thereason they’d become relationally reclusive,some interviewees perceived themselves asalready segregated from their peers and theirwider communities even before boardingschool. Boarding had merely cemented this wayof being. For example, the castle dwellerrecounted that she’d not mixed with neigh-bouring children, had been taught in isolationby governesses up until boarding school age andfound it deeply shocking suddenly to besubmerged into a peer group for the first time inher life at the age of twelve.

Barbara, said, ‘It is difficult to explain thedeep bonds between the aristocracy and theiremployees – they have great trust and respect foreach other, but wouldn’t socialise together’. Shecontinued, ‘I had ‘real’ friendships with thegardener’s children but wouldn’t dream oftaking them back to the big house…. Everyoneknew their place – in that way it was actuallymore equal’. Barbara recognised that her noble

Children on theIsle of Eiggcelebrate the 10thanniversary oftheir successfulcommunity buy-out, 12 June2007.

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upbringing provided her with confidence as ayoung person, yet she failed to acknowledge thatthe deportment she enjoyed fundamentallycontradicted her notion of ‘equality’. Her statusand her friends’ survival were both dependentupon ‘the big house’. Paradoxically it wasBarbara who was removed from her first board-ing school after an incident of self harm. Shedescribed being harassed incessantly by herpeers because she ‘had a photo of [her] goat bymy bed’ instead of usual ‘photo of mother’ aswas the norm of her generation. Her failedattempts to hold her ground within her ownclass strata, away from the protection of ‘the bighouse’, sheds light on her favour of traditionalpower hierarchies where her lineage automati-cally places her at the top.

Elizabeth, when interviewed in her largefarmhouse near Edinburgh surrounded by hugeoaks, lamented a lack of relational standing inher adult life, said, ‘Farmers [i.e. landowners]used to have much more standing in thecommunity. A lot of people were dependent onthem for a living. Now people hardly know whoyou are’. Lucy, the island laird commented, ‘Ourhouse is very private. We can’t see the rest of thecommunity. The people are nice but myhusband’s family are still considered “outsiders”after forty years’.

Almost exclusively, the women noted thatthey preferred their relationship with naturethan with people. Aristocrat, Margaret surmised‘nature brings us perspective and brings onedown to earth’. Fiona with the healing centresaid, ‘I like my own space so stay away frompeople quite a bit’. Similarly, Morag, living onthe land of her roots but feeling exiled by heraccent, remarked, ‘My relationship with the landis the only relationship I can depend upon’. Howfar such statements might shed light on the oft-remarked ‘British attitude to animals’ could bea fruitful field for further study. Indeed, Barbarathe organic farmer explicitly said, ‘I prefernature and animals to humans’.

Boarding in big houses, ‘cut off by greatoceans of land from the outside world’44 merelyreflected the reality of the landed boarders andstrengthened the dynamic of segregation.

GROUNDING: THE LAND ANDKNOWING YOUR ‘ROOTS’ With marked clarity and resolve, the schoolprincipal asserted that, from personal experi-ence and from her observation of students,‘Having one’s own patch [of land] becomes veryimportant in the context of boarding … impor-tant for knowing where you belong’. She saw itas a marker of rooted and grounded identitywhere peer and family relationships may havesuffered uncertainty and disconnection. This

point was highlighted by Morag’s recollectionthat, ‘During my last year [away at school] myparents sold the family home and land. Theypulled the rug out from under me. It was verytraumatic’. As adults, a minority had an activerole working their land and noted the signifi-cance of this to their sense of identity and inde-pendence. Sue, the first boarder of her family,said, ‘I’m addicted to the land now – it groundsme’. Barbara, an organic farmer testified to thevisceral extent of this: ‘I can’t bear the thoughtof leaving the land or having someone else’sanimals on it – its very primitive really, veryterritorial’. Margaret similarly spoke of ‘cling-ing to the castle as our stable family homebecause we moved constantly with my fatherbeing a [high ranking officer in the armedforces]’. And Ella, in her final year at an exclu-sive fee paying boarding school when inter-viewed said that when at home on the 10,000acre family farm, ‘I like knowing that everythingI can see is mine’.

Consistent with ecopsychological theory,45

several respondents described land in terms ofproviding ‘a healing space’. Articulation of thistended to be spiritualised: for example, ‘I have avery spiritual connection with nature, a healingconnection,’ or, ‘My relationship to the land isdefinitely spiritual – God comes through theland, the beauty of the land’. With an ecofemi-nist twist the latter respondent added, ‘We areall standing on the ground … having babies isglobal. It connects me to all women’. Theadopted Hebridian laird asked somewhatrhetorically, ‘is it a homing thing?’

That said, many of the women noted thatwhile their brothers inherited the family land,they were expected to find security and landedconnection through heterosexual marriage. Suchpatrilineal inheritance continues to dominateScottish land ownership.46 Consistent with ourreasons for selecting an all-female sample tostudy, it would suggest that women from thelanded classes suffer even greater challenges tothe security of their identity than do men. Inshort, their identity depends on other non-related men and forming lasting relationships.

CONCLUSION – LAND ANDREFORMING IDENTITY Within its limitations of sample and sample size,our oral history study found that, with fewexceptions, the privileged women interviewedfelt possessive and territorial over their land,space and privacy in ways that could, arguably,be understood as compensatory for their child-hood and boarding experiences. Our openinghypothesis therefore finds a degree of support,enough to merit further study we would suggestwith a larger sample group. However, we

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consider that care should be taken in how farboarding schools should in themselves befocussed in on for this situation. It may be thatboarding is just a presenting symptom of amuch wider upper-class pedagogical constella-tion.47 We would observe that in recent years,professional bodies such as the UK BoardingSchools’ Association have shown growingawareness of the importance of child welfareand protection, in addition to ‘opening up’ theirservices and lands to preserve ‘charitable’status. It could, therefore, be argued that ourqualitative findings are somewhat anachronis-tic. Be that as it may, the fact remains that thecurrent generation of Scottish landowners haveoften been through an un-reconstitutedapproach. Furthermore, many boarding schoolsremain manifestly proud of their historicalnarratives that revolve around an ethos ofwinning and ruling over others. Indeed, suchhistorical narratives are drawn upon to promotethe schools and secure future pupils. AsWellington reputedly claimed, ‘Waterloo waswon on the playing-fields of Eton’. Such anethos today arguably carries forward from impe-rialism to globalisation.

For the primary author, the colonial under-tones of her observations in Britain resonatewith her observations from within a white,landed, boarding family in New Zealand. HereBritish upper class pedagogical mores have helda largely unconscious sway in a manner that isoften more apparent to Maori (indigenous)observers than to most Pakeha (settler) ones.This is unsurprising given the symbiosis between

the British private boarding school system andthe Empire. While Britain’s ‘Celtic fringe’ wasbeing ‘internally colonised’ via the Clearancesand earlier Enclosures,48 the way was simulta-neously being paved for the displaced toconstruct new identities in appropriated landselsewhere.

The boarding ethos manages this ‘burden’and morally justifies it by teaching noblesseoblige. Perhaps that was laudable in the pastwhen feudal colonisation was a European norm.But in the new context of post-feudal Scotland,it must be asked whether such noblesse nowrepresents what Illich49 called ‘the seamy side ofcharity’, and Freire50 describes as the ‘falsegenerosity’ of which ‘an unjust social order isthe permanent fount’.

Leaving aside justice for the oppressed, wewould close by arguing that it is not in the bestinterests of landowners as people to leave,unchallenged, a pedagogy that perpetuatesrepresentation of the self around the control ofpropertied power and the control over commu-nities that it often carries. Again, we arereminded by Freire: ‘This, then, is the greathumanistic and historical task of the oppressed:to liberate themselves and their oppressors aswell’. Perhaps it is in the needs of the childrenthat we best discern the seeds of change, begin-ning with the recognition that the separation ofhome and land from boarding school is one thatcreates many intended and unintended conse-quences – consequences that have ramificationswell beyond the gates of any bothy, countryhouse or castle.

NOTES1. John Bryden & Charles Geisler, ‘Community-based land reform: Lessons from Scotland’, LandUse Policy, Elsevier Ltd, issue 24, 2007, pp 24-34.2. B. Laslett, ‘Personal narratives as sociology’,Contemporary Sociology, vol 28, no 4, 1999,pp 391-401. 3. Andy Wightman, Who Owns Scotland,Edinburgh: Canongate, 1996 and AndyWightman, ‘Land reform. An agenda for the2007-2011 Scottish Parliament’, 14 September2007,http://www.andywightman.com/docs/landreform2007-final.pdf4. Bryden & Geisler, 2007; Wightman, 14September 2007; and Scottish CroftingFoundation, ‘Crofting Reform etc Act 2007 –summary of changes’, The Crofter, no 78,February 2008, p 10.5. Munro Gauld, ‘Community land ownership inScotland – the story so far’. Reforesting Scotland,issue 34, 2006, pp 8 – 9, and pers comMcIntosh 2006.

6. Stephen Johnson, Character Styles. London:W W Norton, 1994, and John MacEwen,Who Owns Scotland? Edinburgh: EUSPB,1977.7. Wightman 1996 & pers com McIntosh,2004.8. LRPG – Land Reform Policy Group,‘Recommendations for Action’ (the Land ReformGreen Paper), Edinburgh: Scottish Office,1999, p 1. 9. James Hunter, On the Other Side of Sorrow:Nature and People in the Scottish Highlands,Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1995, and MichaelHechter, Internal Colonialism:Celtic Fringe inBritish National Development, US: TransactionPublishers, 1998, and Alastair McIntosh, Soiland Soul: People versus Corporate Power,London: Aurum Press, 2001.10. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed,Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972, and WalterWink, Engaging the Powers, Philadelphia:Fortress, 1992. 11. Alastair McIntosh, 2007, Scottish LandReform Sound Archives 1990s,

http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/articles/2007-land-reform-audio-archives-1990s.htm12. LRPG, 1999, p 4.13. Nick Duffell, The Making of Them: TheBritish Attitude to Children and the BoardingSchool System, London: Lone Arrow Press,2000, and Joy Schaverien, ‘Boarding school:the trauma of the “privileged” child’, Journal ofAnalytical Psychology, vol 49, 2004, p 5, andJacqueline Downs, ‘Adapting to secondary and boarding school: Self-concept, place identityand homesickness’, Collected papers of theSecond Biennial Self-Concept Enhancement andLearning (SELF) Conference, eds, R Craven, HMarsh & K Simpson, Sydney: SELF, 2002.14. P J Rich, The Elixir of Empire - The EnglishPublic Schools, Ritualism, Freemasonry andImperialism, London: Regency Press, 1989.15. Judith Okely, Own or Other Culture,London: Routledge, 1996.16. Overseas readers should note that inBritain, ‘private’ fee-paying schooling isanachronistically referred to as ‘public schooling’,in contrast with more everyday ‘state schooling’.

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17. Duffell, 200018. Schaverien, 200419. George Monbiot, “Only class war onpublic schools can rid us of this unhinged rulingclass”, The Guardian, 22 January 2008,http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2244731,00.html .20. Peter Reason & Hilary Bradbury (eds) TheHandbook of Action Research:ParticipativeInquiry and Practice, London: Sage, 2000.21. Tom Bottomore & Robert Brym, TheCapitalist Class - An International Study,Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989, p 27.22. Pierre, Bourdieu, Distinction – a SocialCritique of the Judgement of Taste. London:Routledge, 1984.23. Bottomore and Brym, 1989, p 31.24. Jeremy Paxman, The English. London:Michael Joseph, 1998, pp 176-7.25. Paxman,1998, p 178.26. Okely, 1996, p 151.27. B G Glaser, Basics of Grounded TheoryAnalysis: Emergence versus Forcing, Mill Valley:Sociology Press, 1992.

28. Carrick Media, Who’s Who in Scotland2004, ISBN - 094672454729. Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature,London: The Women’s Press, 1984, andCarolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature,London: Wildwood House, 1980, and Freire,1972. 30. Reason & Bradbury, 2000.31. Freire, 1972.32. L Stanley and S Wise, Breaking out again:feminist ontology and Epistemology, London:Routledge, 1993, pp 150-155.33. John Bowlby, A Secure Base: ClinicalApplications of Attachment Theory, London:Routledge, 1988.34. Duffell, 2000.35. Alice Miller, For Your Own Good -TheRoots of Violence in Childrearing, London:Virago,1987.36. Okley, 1996, p 154.37. Arlie Russell Hochschild, The ManagedHeart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling,Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.38. Hochschild, 2003, pp 56-57.39. Miller, 1987; Johnson, 1994; Duffell, 2000.

40. Bottomore & Brym, 1989.41. George Monbiot cited in Duffell, 2000, p 174.42. Okely, 1996.43. John Scott, Who Rules Britain?,Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991, and Bourdieu,1984.44. Gathorne-Hardy, J., The Public SchoolPhenomenon, London: Hodder & Stroughton,1977, pp 103-5.45. Theodore Roszak, Mary Gomes & AllenKanner, (eds), Ecopsychology: Restoring theEarth; Healing the Mind. San Francisco, SierraClub, 1995.46. Wightman, 1996.47. Miller, 1987.48. Hechter, 1998.49. Ivan, Illich, Deschooling Society, New York:Harper & Row, 1971, p 47.50. Freire, 1972, p 21.

Address for correspondence:chrissbull@yahoo.com.aumail@AlastairMcIntosh.comc.r.clark@strath.ac.uk