Deviance, Marginality and the Highland Bandit in Seventeenth-Century Scotland

TY - JOUR

T1 - Deviance, Marginality and the Highland Bandit in Seventeenth-Century Scotland

AU - Kennedy, Allan

PY - 2022/7/4

Y1 - 2022/7/4

N2 - Eric Hobsbawm’s thesis of ‘social banditry’ has stimulated a great deal of discussion about the nature of bandit activity. This discussion has shed much light not just upon banditry as a historical problem, but on its capacity to offer wider insights into social structures. This article seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion by bringing to bear the hitherto largely ignored Scottish evidence. Assessing the origins and nature of Highland banditry in its seventeenth-century ‘heyday’, the article contends that brigandage, in this case, should be understood less as a structural issue and more as a form of individual social marginality. From that basis, the article suggests that banditry, both in Scotland and more generally, can be understood as a ‘stress test’ of the society around it, helping to delineate the boundaries of social acceptability while also shedding light on the way early modern societies handled and accommodated the problem of deviance.

AB - Eric Hobsbawm’s thesis of ‘social banditry’ has stimulated a great deal of discussion about the nature of bandit activity. This discussion has shed much light not just upon banditry as a historical problem, but on its capacity to offer wider insights into social structures. This article seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion by bringing to bear the hitherto largely ignored Scottish evidence. Assessing the origins and nature of Highland banditry in its seventeenth-century ‘heyday’, the article contends that brigandage, in this case, should be understood less as a structural issue and more as a form of individual social marginality. From that basis, the article suggests that banditry, both in Scotland and more generally, can be understood as a ‘stress test’ of the society around it, helping to delineate the boundaries of social acceptability while also shedding light on the way early modern societies handled and accommodated the problem of deviance.

KW - Scotland

KW - banditry

KW - crime

KW - highlands

KW - marginality

KW - violence

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85133360807

U2 - 10.1080/03071022.2022.2077465

DO - 10.1080/03071022.2022.2077465

M3 - Article

SN - 0307-1022

VL - 47

SP - 239

EP - 264

JO - Social History

JF - Social History

IS - 3

ER -