This article analyzes how Jamie Oliver’s show Jamie’s Great Britain represented Scotland in 2012, when the referendum on Scottish independence had already been announced. It follows Anderson, Bourdieu, Bhabha, cultural studies, and the idea that the nation is a hegemonic construction. Biosemiotics provides useful perspectives on the representations of Nature and Culture. Semiotic analysis interprets representations of the nation on the show. The results show that, while Oliver identifies English and Welsh food cultural origins with the Industrial Revolution and the Coal Boom, respectively, he finds Scotland’s food origins in the Vikings. Scotland is a land of ancestral habits and people, where Nature is inhospitable. Oliver represents England and Wales through the cultural categories of indices and symbols, while crude iconic representations of Nature are used to depict Scotland. Moreover, the Vikings also originated England and Wales (and Ireland), and in the end, the Vikings are constructed as the common roots of the nation that Oliver celebrates, the United Kingdom. Thus, Scotland is only represented as a part of the state-nation, a kind of ancestral room of the big house of the United Kingdom.
AndersonB. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism.
London, England:
Verso.
2.
AppaduraiA. (1988).
How to make a national cuisine: Cookbooks in contemporary India.Contemporary Studies in Society and History,
30(1), 3–24.
3.
Buscemi, F. (2014a). Jamie Oliver and the gastrodiplomacy of simulacra. Public Diplomacy Magazine, Winter, 46–50.
4.
Buscemi, F (2014b). From killing cows to culturing meat. The British Food Journal, 116(6), 952–964.
5.
BelascoW. (2002). Food matters: Perspectives on an emerging field. In BelascoW.ScrantonP. (Eds.), Food nations: Selling taste in consumer societies (pp. 2–23).
New York, NY:
Routledge.
6.
BenchimolA.SchlesingerP. (2018).
Introduction: 1707, 2014 and the constitutional imperative in Scotland’s national press and civil society.Scottish Affairs,
27(1), 1–10.
7.
BergerA. (2000). Media and communication research methods: An introduction to qualitative and quantitative approaches.
London, England:
Sage.
8.
BhabhaH. K. (1990). Introduction: Narrating the nation. In BhabhaH. K. (Ed.), Nation and narration (pp. 1–7).
London, England:
Routledge.
9.
BicketD. (1999).
Fictional Scotland: A “realm of the imagination” in film drama and literature.Journal of Communication Inquiry,
23(1), 3–19.
10.
BourdieuP. (1998). The left hand and the right hand of the state. In BourdieuP. (Ed.), Acts of resistance (pp. 1–10).
Cambridge, MA:
Polity Press.
11.
BourdieuP.WacquantL.FarageS. (1994).
Rethinking the state: Genesis and structure of the bureaucratic field. Sociological Theory,
12(1), 1–18.
12.
ChaudharyN. (2012). Making sense of the Bindì: Urban Indians’ appraisal of a culturally valued symbol. In Uchoa BrancoA.ValsinerJ. (Eds.), Cultural psychology of human values (pp. 113–135).
Charlotte, NC:
Information Age Publishing.
13.
CollingwoodW. G. (1927).
Christian Vikings.Antiquity,
1(2), 172–180.
DavidsonN.McCaffertyP.MillerD. (2010). Neoliberal Scotland: Class and society in a stateless nation.
Newcastle, England:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
16.
EdensorT. (2002). National identity, popular culture and everyday life.
London, England:
Berg.
17.
EngelL. C. (2007). Policy as journey: Tracing the steps of a reinvented Spanish state. In McCarthyC.DurhamA. S.EngelL. C.FilmerA. A.GiardinaM. D.MalagrecaM. A. (Eds.), Globalising cultural studies: Ethnographic interventions in theory, method and policy (pp. 385–406).
New York, NY:
Peter Lang.
18.
FosterJ. (1974). Class struggle and the Industrial Revolution: Early industrial capitalism in three English towns.
London, England:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
19.
FowlerB. (1997). Pierre Bourdieu and cultural theory: Critical investigations.
London, England:
Sage.
20.
GibsonG.NeelyS. (2007). Scottish television drama and parochial representation. In SchoeneB. (Ed.), The Edinburgh companion to contemporary Scottish literature (pp. 106–113).
Edinburgh, Scotland:
Edinburgh University Press.
21.
GiddensA. (1985). The nation-state and violence.
Cambridge, MA:
Polity Press.
22.
GiordanoB.RollerE. (2002).
Catalonia and the idea of Europe: Competing strategies and discourses within Catalan Party politics.European Urban and Regional Studies,
9(2), 99–113.
23.
GrossB. (2009). Locating Britain: Migration and shifting boundaries on TV news. In CastellòE. A, Dhoest. O’DonnellH. (Eds.), The Nation on screen: Discourses of the national on global television (pp. 139–155).
Newcastle, England:
Cambridge Scholars.
24.
GuibernauM. (2007). The identity of nations.
Cambridge, MA:
Polity Press.
25.
HallS. (1992). The question of cultural identity. In HallS.HeldS. D.McGrewT. (Eds.), Modernity and its futures (pp. 273–316).
Cambridge, MA:
Polity Press-The Open University.
26.
HibberdL. (2007).
Devolution in policy and practice: A study of River City and BBC Scotland.Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture,
4(3), 107–125.
27.
HigsonA. (1995). Waving the flag: Constructing a national cinema in Britain.
Wotton-under-Edge, England:
Clarendon Press.
28.
House of Lords. (2014). Scottish independence: Constitutional implications of the Referendum.
London, England:
House of Lords.
29.
HughesD. (2007). The British chronicles (
Vol.1).
Westminster, MD:
Heritage Books.
30.
HumphriesJ. (2010). Childhood and child labour in the British Industrial Revolution.
Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.
31.
JakobsonR. (1987). Language in literature.
Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
32.
JamesonF. (1991). Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism.
Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
KapfererB. (1994). Remythologizations of power and identity: Nationalism and violence in Sri-Lanka. In RupesingheK.RubioM. (Eds.), The culture of violence (pp. 59–91).
New York, NY:
United Nations University Press.
36.
LaugheyD. (2007). Key themes in media theory.
Maidenhead, England:
Open University Press.
37.
MartinelliD. (2010). A critical companion to zoosemiotics: People, paths, ideas.
Dordrecht, The Netherlands:
Springer.
38.
McCroneD. (2017). The new sociology of Scotland.
London, England:
Sage.
39.
McIvorA.JohnstonR. (2007). Miners’ lung: A history of dust disease in British coal mining.
Adelshot, England:
Ashgate.
40.
MeineckeF. (1970). Cosmopolitanism and the national state. Translated from German by R. B. Kimber. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
41.
MorleyD. (2004a). Broadcasting and the construction of the national family. InAllenR. C.. HillA. (Eds.), The television studies reader (pp. 418–441).
London, England:
Routledge.
42.
MorleyD. (2004b). At home with television. In SpigelL.OlssonJ. (Eds.), Television after TV: Essays on a medium in transition (pp. 303–323).
Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
43.
NöthW. (1995). Handbook of semiotics.
Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.
44.
O’SullivanT.HartleyJ.SaundersD.MontgomeryM.FiskeJ. (1994). Key concepts in communication and cultural studies. 2nd ed.
London, England:
Routledge.
45.
PeirceC. S. (1960). Collected papers. Vol. II: Elements of logic.
Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
PoulsenB. (2008). Dutch herring: An environmental history c. 1600 – 1860.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands:
Aksant.
49.
SchlesingerP. (1997).
From cultural defence to political culture: Media, politics and collective identity in the European Union.Media Culture and Society,
19, 369–391.
50.
SchlesingerP. (2000). Constitutional change, media and the public sphere: The case of Scotland. In WangG.ServaesJ.GoonasekeraA. (Eds.), The new communications landscape: Demystifying media globalization (pp. 124–143).
London, England:
Routledge.
51.
SchlesingerP.BenchimolA. (2015).
Small nations, the press and the digital challenge. Media, Culture and Society,
37(1), 101–106.
52.
SebeokT. A. (1991). Communication. In SebeokT. A. (Ed.), A sign is just a sign (pp. 22–35).
Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.
SiewersA. K. (2014). Introduction: Song, tree, and spring: Environmental meaning and environmental humanities. In SiewersA. K. (Ed.), Re-imagining nature: Environmental humanities and ecosemiotics (pp. 1–41).
Lanham, MD:
Bucknell University Press – Rowman and Littlefield.
55.
SpigelL. (2004). Introduction. In SpigelL.OlssonJ. (Eds.), Television after TV: Essays on a medium in transition (pp. 1–34).
Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
56.
SweeneyM. (2008). Broadcasting from birth to devolution … and beyond. In BlainN.HutchisonD. (Eds.), The media in Scotland (pp. 87–103).
Edinburgh, Scotland:
Edinburgh University Press.
57.
TolzV.BoothS. (2005). Introduction. In TolzV.BoothS. (Eds.), Nation and gender in contemporary Europe (pp. 1–8).
Manchester, England:
Manchester University press.
58.
T⊘nnesenM.TũũrK. (2014). The semiotics of animal representations: Introduction. In TũũrK.T⊘nnesenM. (Eds.), The semiotics of animal representations (pp. 7–30).
Amsterdam, The Netherlands:
Rodopi.
59.
WilliamsR. (1983). The year 2000.
New York, NY:
Pantheon.
60.
WiseT. (1979). Saxon, Viking and Norman.
Oxford, England:
Osprey Publishing.
61.
WhatleyC. A. (1997). The industrial revolution in Scotland.
Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.
