Devolution and the Scottish Conservatives: Banal Activism, Electioneering and the Politics of Irrelevance (New Ethnographies) [Hardcover]

As ethnographies increasingly tend to be multi-sited case studies with a concern for grand theory, it is refreshing to encounter Smith's insightful ethnography of the local in the throes of change - in this case, the embattled Conservative Party within the bounded Scottish communities of Dumfries and Galloway after they were routed in the '97 elections. Australian-born and bred, Smith arrived in Scotland as an MSc student at Edinburgh by way of a 'British Chevening scholarship' (p x). Whilst learning about the local culture, the plight of the Conservative Party in Scotland caught Smith's attention as the object for his PhD thesis. Building upon Malinowski's dictum for long-term fieldwork, Smith fleshed out a Geertzian 'thick description' of Conservative Party activists between September 2001 and July 2003 of their banal attempts to re-approach voters. Smith writes "although the bureaucratic practices they employed seemed familiar, local Conservatives did not engage in them as if their campaign was 'business as usual'. Rather, they embraced banal activism as something 'new' and 'different' from how they had attempted to organise in past elections" (p 9). In the ensuing chapters, Smith explores the "contradictions and paradoxes" for "local Conservatives who, despite apparently facing a 'crisis' of irrelevance, nevertheless continued to exercise a 'presence' in the imagination of their opponents" (p 13).

Written as an engaging chronological record, reminiscent of Sugden and Tomlinson's 'FIFA and the Contest for World Football' (1998), stylistic elements of novelistic plot make for an entertaining read. The climax, of course, was the upcoming elections. This volume's ethnographic richness is sufficient to allow it to serve as a primer for activists of all stripes wishing to conduct a general electoral campaign. Scholars, too, will appreciate that voters have not forgiven the Conservative Party in Scotland as it sought to throw Scottish sovereignty under the bus. In today's global hegemony, Scottish Conservatives remind us that our cultural identity is defined largely by our consumption and that the consumption of symbolic values is essential to the maintenance of our identity. Voters in Scotland wanted a Scottish Parliament, a symbolic capitol of social capital, which the Conservative Party sought to deny them. For that, they were driven to near extinction in Scotland. If Cicero was correct in stating that "freedom is participation in power", the people of Scotland enjoy a high degree of freedom.