About the Project

Origins

This project emerged as the digital component of a larger Master’s thesis that seeks to investigate the hypermasculinity of Scotland’s national narrative and the manifestation of such trends in built heritage. Rather than simply describe trends in text, the employment of digital methodologies, namely geospatial mapping, allows for the visualization of quantitative data and the reaching of more diverse qualitative conclusions regarding memorialization patterns in the Scottish capital city of Edinburgh.

For the thesis, see UCF Stars. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/historythesesdissertations/

Premise

The appropriation of Highland culture across Scotland in response to the Union of 1707 and fears of English ascendancy within Britain has fostered a deeply ingrained popular memory of heroism, fraternity, and strength as depicted by tartan-clad warriors and indomitable clan chiefs. While popular discourse is shifting to incorporate increasingly diverse populations & the assertion of Scottish independence, Scotland’s physical heritage landscape remains static.

Thesis

The landscape that dominates the covers of guidebooks and travel media is perhaps the most antiquated incarnation of Scottish identity and stands to perpetuate an exclusionary image of contemporary society to locals and visitors alike. The invisibility of key players, namely women, reinforces a hypermasculine, heteropatriarchal hegemony and alienates a significant portion of Scottish society.

Guiding Questions

How is the lack of space for women in the Scottish national narrative reinforced in physical manifestations like monuments?
What do the locations and distribution of women’s monuments say about their significance within the larger heritage landscape and the narrative that shapes it?
How do heritage sites, tourist destinations, and the bodies that govern them exemplify and reinforce carefully constructed narratives of dominance, power, inclusion, and exclusion?
To what extent has the Scottish heritage industry favored, and thus perpetuated, a mainstream hypermasculine narrative?

Methodology

Quantitative approach to primary sources including Historic Environment Scotland’s Canmore database, the City of Edinburgh Council’s Monuments in Parks and Green Spaces database, Scottish listings within the Imperial War Museum’s War Memorials Register, and a host of listings of public cart, including that of the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association (PMSA) to form the data corpus for mapping
Reinvigoration of the the framework provided by WHS’s “Mapping Memorials to Women in Scotland” project (http://womenofscotland.org.uk/) to provide necessary context and allow for more dynamic interpretation of results
Creation of layered maps with open access Google MyMaps software to plot the location, distribution, and density of women’s monuments and memorials alongside their male counterparts in the Scottish capital city of Edinburgh
Integration of contemporary heritage discourse by plotting sites found in online guides from leading tourism authorities like Frommer’s and Fodor’s alongside memorial data to account for the popular perspective that often drives tourism

Incorporating Gender

Gender history is loosely defined as a subfield of history that looks at the past through the lens of gender. Rather than focusing solely on men as the dominant subject, as history has traditionally done, or solely on women, as early women’s history advocated for, gender historians study men and women in conjunction and evaluate how each group has experienced historical events differently based on the social constructs that govern behavior, engagement, and power.

British historian Olwen Hufton explained in 1988 that adding a “gender dimension” to historical research helps to suggest “relevant areas or issues in the period under review where the attitudes or position of women, differentiated perhaps by class or national group, influenced the course of events.” She noted that “to write history without reference to gender is to distort the vision.” (Olwen Hufton, “What is Women’s History…?” in J. Gardiner (ed) What is History Today…? (London: Palgrave, 1988): 82).

The dynamic that informed national interaction and the hierarchy of power and control in post-1707 Scotland was inherently gendered, so therefore we can expect the landscape and the principles that govern it to be gendered as well. Mapping monuments to women in the framework of gender reveals trends that would otherwise be downplayed or even obscured by qualitative data and helps to tell the story of Edinburgh’s women in the context of the sociocultural conditions that have ultimately led to their obscurity.

Mapping Parameters

“Edinburgh” = City of Edinburgh and surrounding villages within the A720 Edinburgh bypass
“Monuments & Memorials” = statues, sculptures, or freestanding physical structures erected to commemorate a person or group of people
“Plaques” = ornamental tablets fixed to a structure in commemoration of a person or group of people

Why Map?

Emphasizing trends in the writing of history and translating them into tangible visualizations like maps helps to shed a new light on tensions in historical narratives. Placing monuments to women back into the context of their built environment reveals the anachronous nature of such narratives and of the heritage industry in conveying contemporary identity in key locations like the Scottish capital. These maps reveal that Scottish heritage is anything but silent on issues of inclusivity; in this light, the message of gendered significance and value within the national narrative is explicit.

Recognizing the exclusion and eliminationism that comes with entrenched power and antiquated portrayals of a dynamic contemporary identity helps bridge gaps not only within historical understandings of nationalism and its manifestations, but also between disciplines like history, women’s and gender studies, cultural heritage management, and tourism. Investigations like this help to expand debates on hot topics like the relevance of monuments as well as the nature of representation in public spaces. Calling attention to critical absences in highly anticipated heritage landscapes like Edinburgh is the first step in making room for crucial yet forgotten actors in public interpretations of the past.