Land, identity, school: exploring women's identity with land in Scotland through the experience of boarding school

This study explores the effects of private British boarding school on women landowners' identity and their relationship to the land. In noting how the private British boarding school system and the Empire were symbiotically related, it discusses how the ruling class were shaped within boarding institutions that cultivated hegemonic superiority and self-perpetuating patterns of subjugation and domination. Boarding school ethos has played a key role in maintaining these 'norms' of power as the young strive for place and identity within hierarchical, closed environments. Using an indepth qualitative, grounded theory approach, eleven women in Scotland shared their stories with the primary researcher, all of whom were ex-boarders and experienced being removed from their home environment usually in pre-adolescence. Almost exclusively, these women felt that their sense of identity had been damaged whilst being formed in the process. In adulthood, they felt possessive and territorial in arguably compensatory ways over their land, space and privacy. This possibly sheds light on dynamics of landownership that extend beyond usual considerations of economics and status. The study both commences and concludes by noting the implications for people-land relationships in the light of Scotland's land reform process.