“When They Go Low, We Go Highland” : Navigating the UK’s Legal Landscape & Its Competing Nationalisms

Abstract

This thesis examines the layered constructions of sovereignty, law, and national identity through Scotland’s evolving relationship with England, Britain, and Europe. Drawing from archival research, ethnographic fieldwork, and theoretical frameworks in legal anthropology and postcolonial studies, I trace how landscapes, legal structures, and cultural memory produce competing visions of nationhood within the United Kingdom. I argue that Scotland’s constitutional position reveals a system of nested colonialism—an internal reproduction of imperial hierarchies—while simultaneously offering pathways for nested resistance through strategic affiliations with Europe and cultural reinvention. My analysis builds on E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s theory of segmentary opposition to conceptualize sovereignty not as a fixed possession but as a relational and evolving practice. Ethnographic vignettes, from archival encounters to moments at the Edinburgh Fringe, illustrate how national belonging is enacted, challenged, and reimagined in everyday life. Ultimately, this thesis proposes that Scotland’s constitutional future, and Europe’s broader trajectory, lie not in returning to static notions of sovereignty but in embracing mobility, plurality, and unfinished forms of political belonging.

Keywords: sovereignty, nested colonialism, nationalism, Scotland, legal anthropology, regionalism, cultural reinvention