Dignity and Dionysus: Doing Wildness on the West Coast of Scotland

This is a dissertation about attachment and survival in a small community on the West Coast of Scotland: a tiny village on the edge of a vast landscape, a scenic area valued for its exceptional remoteness and wildness. Glenmara contradicts itself, and this tension creates value. It is a place that is both distant and connected, warm and wild. Remote and hospitable. A place that needs exposure but also carefully tends to its insularity. Falling in love with Glenmara is easy: everyone does. But staying the course takes work. This dissertation cares about endurance as a way of life and the sacrifices that are made for the sake of remoteness and wildness. It is a story about the exhilaration of an otherworldly place and how we struggle to live with each other when we try to hold onto things we can’t keep.

This dissertation is based on 18 months of ethnographic research conducted on the West Coast of Scotland between 2014-2016. It is situated in a small place that dramatizes everything that is human about living together: the promise and impossibility of social cohesion, the pleasures and dangers of intimacy, and the ways we both help and hurt each other, collectively.