culture name u.k

8/7/2019 Culture Name U.K

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Culture Name

British

Alternative Name

Formally known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Orientation

Identification. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the

formal name of the sovereign state governed by Parliament in London.The term

"United Kingdom" normally is understood to include Northern Ireland; the term "Great

Britain" refers to the island of Britain and its constituent nations of England, Wales, and

Scotland but does not include Northern Ireland. Any citizen of Great Britain may be

referred to as a Briton.

Location and Geography. The land area of Great Britain is 89,000 square miles

(230,500 square kilometers), with an additional 5,400 square miles (13,986 square

kilometers) in Northern Ireland, giving it one of the highest population densities in the

Western world. Although the country lies mostly at the latitude of Labrador in the

western Atlantic, the climate is tempered by the Gulf Stream and does not have

extremes of summer heat or winter cold. Except for some areas of barren upland and

bog, most of the land is suitable for agriculture and has been grazed or cultivated since

the Bronze Age. The natural vegetation is mixed oak woodland, but most of the terrain

has been cleared for agriculture or for shipbuilding and charcoal for smelting.The

earliest evidence of human settlement is at Boxgrove, Sussex, and the island may have

been continuously occupied for 500,000 years.

Demography. The population is approximately 55 million: 46 million in England, 5

million in Scotland, 2.5 million in Wales, and 1.5 million in Northern Ireland.

The nation's cultural diversity has been increased by migration within the British Isles

and by immigration from Europe and overseas. Until 1920, Ireland was incorporated

within the United Kingdom. Movement across the Irish Sea had existed since the


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eighteenth century, even among Ireland's poorest people. In the nineteenth century,

there was a regular pattern of seasonal migration of farm workers from Ireland to

Britain. Irishmen volunteered for the Royal Navy and British Army regiments in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and saw service in all parts of the empire. A wide

variety of other Irish people spent periods in Britain, which had a more highly developed

economy than Ireland. From 1841 onward, the censuses of Scotland, England, and

Wales have enumerated Irish-born people in every part of the country. Similarly,

Scottish and Welsh people have settled in England. Most British people have ancestries

that are mixtures of the four nationalities of the British Isles.

Before and after World War II, political and religious refugees and displaced persons

from the Baltic countries, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary were offered shelter in

Britain and remained, along with some prisoners of war. Other immigrants of European

ancestry who were born in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South and East Africa,

along with Greek and Turkish Cypriots, also settled in Britain. After the late 1940s,

many of non-European overseas immigrants arrived, predominantly from the colonies,

including people of Indian and African ancestry from the West Indies and Guyana;

people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; and Chinese from Hong Kong and

Singapore. The 1991 census, the first to include ethnic background, enumerated three

million Britons of non-European birth or ancestry.

Linguistic Affiliation. Regional and cultural relationships are expressed in marked

linguistic differences. Although the language has been modified by a gradual

convergence toward "estuary English" a


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United Kingdom

less formal variety of southeastern speech, and educational and socioeconomic factors,

it is possible to determine people's geographical origins by the way they speak. In some

areas, there are significant differences in speech patterns from one city or county to its

neighbor. These differences are associated with loyalties to one's place of birth or

residence and for many people are important aspects of self-identity; non-English native

languages are little spoken but in recent years have gained significance as cultural and

political symbols. These languages include Scots Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, and Irish

(commonly referred to as the Celtic languages); there is also the Old Norse language of

the Northern Isles (Orkney and especially Shetland) and the Norman French patois of

the Channel Islands. In Wales, 80 percent of the people speak English as their first or

only language and those who speak Welsh as their first language are bilingual. In

Scotland, Gaelic is not a national symbol because it was never spoken in some parts of

that country. People in the Northern Isles are bilingual in English and an unwritten

creolized form of Old Norse; in the Channel Islands, the Norman French patois is nearly


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extinct; and in Cornwall, there are no natural speakers of Cornish, although the

language has been reconstructed. In Northern Ireland, the Irish language has been

reintroduced as a means of revitalizing Celtic pride among Belfast Catholics.

Symbolism. Symbolic attachment may reinforce localism or take the form of personal

commitments that extend across socioeconomic strata. Support for soccer and rugby

teams became significant during the twentieth century, and teams now command fierce

local loyalties as sport has come to symbolize male pride and self-image in a society

where mining and manufacturing have declined. Forms of personal commitment that

transcend locality include vegetarianism and environmentalism: the first is

predominantly middle class and female, and the second is identified less with gender

and socioeconomic status. On the fringes of society, especially among the young, there

has been a significant growth in new religious movements, which include radical

environmentalist cults, New Age paganism, anarchism, anticapitalist and antinuclear

groups, and adopted Far Eastern and South Asian religions and belief systems,

including martial arts cults. Cults based on popular music and performers engender

personal commitment in culturally patterned ways.

History and Ethnic Relations

Emergence of the Nation. The United Kingdom was formed by Acts of Unionbetween England and Wales (1536) and England, Wales, and Scotland (1707), uniting

the three nations under a single monarchy and legislative council (Parliament in

London). After 1169, the island of Ireland came under British influence, and it became a

colonial dependency in 1690. The British and Irish parliaments were united in 1801. A

separatist movement led to the dissolution of the Union of Great Britain and Ireland in

1920; twenty-six of Ireland's thirty-two counties became the independent Irish Free

State (later the Republic of Ireland), with six of the nine counties of Ulster remaining

within the United Kingdom. The present-day nation also includes the Channel Islands

off the coast of France and the Isle of Man between Britain and Ireland, which are

substantially self-governing. Northern Ireland and Scotland have separate legal and

educational systems and issue their own currency; Wales is fully incorporated within the

English legal, educational, and banking systems. Recent referendums in Scotland and

Wales have resulted in the establishment of a Scottish Parliament which is still under


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the general jurisdiction of London but has limited local taxraising powers, and the

Welsh Assembly, which does not have tax-raising powers.

The native tribes in the central and eastern parts of England were conquered by the

Romans in 55 B.C.E. , and permanent Roman settlements were established in

43 B.C.E. and continued for four hundred years.The numbers of Romans were never

great, but the indigenous upper classes became Romanized and spoke Latin.The

principal Roman towns had baths, temples, amphitheaters, and forums and some of the

roads designed to connect Roman towns are still in use. With the departure of the

Romans, the British Isles were invaded by a succession of warlike peoples from the

European mainland, including the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes; there were also persistent

Danish raids. All migrations influenced the native Britons, as can be seen in the English

language, which is an amalgam of the languages spoken by the waves of colonists.This

turbulence ended with the Norman Conquest in 1066. A new line of kings attempted to

extend control into the farthest reaches of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and struggles

for supremacy between rival chieftains and princes culminated in the Magna Carta of

1215, which eventually led to the establishment of Parliament and representative

democracy. A period of consensus and stability followed the accession to the throne of

the Tudor king Henry VII in 1495. His successor, Henry VIII, broke with the Catholic

church in Rome and declared himself the head of the Church of England.The

dissolution of the monasteries and the confiscation of the property of the Roman

Catholic church occurred during the Reformation, leading to challenges to the monarchy

by rivals who supported Catholicism. Instability, civil unrest, and competition with

other European powers over claims to overseas territory continued for much of the

seventeenth century.

Commerce and manufacturing (principally the domestic woolen and Newfoundland and

Boston salt-fish trades) developed rapidly, and the authority of Parliament over the

monarchy was consolidated by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Capitalism

existed before the Industrial Revolution, but its development was hampered by

technologies limited to water power and a lack of surplus labor. During the period of the

Enclosures (17401789),


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A castle overlooks the water in Scotland. Castles dot the countryside in all parts of the

United Kingdom.

landlords cleared the peasantry from the rural landscape to create fields enclosed by

hedgerows and fences and began to derive profit from new, scientific methods of

intensive agricultural production rather than relying the meager tithes and rents paid by

peasant smallholders. This displaced large numbers of rural people, who were forced to

emigrate to the overseas colonies or migrate to the new sites of industrial production.

The impetus for the Industrial Revolution came from trade with the expanding colonies

by a growing middle class of entrepreneurs and investors whose wealth was not derived

from land but from commerce; those entrepreneurs reinvested their wealth in new

forms of manufacturing and trade rather than in ways that imitated the consumption

patterns of the landed gentry. The Industrial Revolution began at the end of the

seventeenth century, specifically in the machine-driven manufacturing processes made

possible by the steam engine, which was first used in 1698 to draw water from an

underground tin mine, and then was adapted to drive power looms in textile mills.

Overseas colonization and wars with other European powers stimulated the further

development of mining and metallurgy, precision machine tools, navigational

instruments, cartography, and managerial and logistical organization, which were

exploited for commercial gain by private entrepreneurs. By 1815, Britain had the world's

largest and most powerful navy, and within twenty years steam railways and steam-

powered ships designed by British engineers were carrying passengers and cargo for


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profit, allowing British shipping companies to dominate world trade. By midcentury, the

country was the world's leading power in business and finance, engineering, science,

and medicine.

The Industrial Revolution created a new social order as entrepreneurship and factory

production resulted in new forms of wealth and work that were added to the agrarian

social order dominated by aristocratic landowners. The 1832 Reform Act ended the

political privileges of landed wealth by extending the vote to middle-class male heads of

household. The country would be governed by the beliefs, values, and aspirations of the

middle class rather than by those of the landed aristocracy. One dimension of this new

social order was urbanization: as dispersed cottage industries such as weaving were

replaced by mills in central locations, nearby housing was needed for the workers; that

housing frequently was built by the mill owner and rented to the workers.The

populations of Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham doubled or tripled

between 1801 and 1841, and many major towns and cities grew up around mines, mills,

smelting works, ports and railway junctions.

Work in the "dark, satanic mills" brought new levels of exploitation and hardship. Rapid

industrialization caused overcrowding and disease; cholera epidemics between the

1830s and 1860s provoked public unrest and forced the government to improve public

health. Another consequence of Victorian working conditions was the rise of trade

unionism. A socially stratified and politically divided society, that was preoccupied with

distinctions of social class and the rival ideologies of laissez-faire capitalism and state

socialism soon crystallized.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, the United Kingdom was one of the world's

wealthiest and most influential nations. Machine tools, locomotives, and steamships

built in Scotland and the industrial Midlands were exported worldwide; textile products

from Lancashire, Staffordshire china and pottery, Welsh anthracite coal, and finished

steel products from Sheffield, dominated world markets for a century. British mining,

manufacturing, transportation technology; legal, banking and parliamentary systems;

and scientific discoveries and advances were exported worldwide.The nation's wealth

was further underwritten by its position as the chief European colonial power, with

captive markets and extensive sources of cheap labor and raw materials in Australasia,


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Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The country's position as a world power was reduced in

the second half of the twentieth century by two world wars and the gradual decline of its

advantages in manufacturing and business, the loss of the empire, and expensive

experiments with state socialism. By the late 1970s, the nation was in debt to the

International Monetary Fund. The discovery of oil in the North Sea in the 1970s saved

the country from bankruptcy and stimulated economic recovery.Tax revenues from the

oil industry provided the means to restructure the economy away from an obsolescent

manufacturing base and toward a base dominated by service and knowledge-based

industries.

National Identity. The United Kingdom is made up of four interdependent nations

with many common institutions. While differences in everyday modes of sociality and

consumer behavior are not great from one part of the nation to another, some aspects of

culture are symbolic of national or local difference on the level of everyday practice or

on special occasions. Support for the monarchy, political parties, and soccer teams are

the most obvious expressions of contemporary localism; religious adherence and ethnic

differentiation are also significant. Support for the monarchy and the Conservative Party

is highest in England, especially in the south, while in Scotland and Wales it is

substantially lower. In Scotland and Wales, there are minority nationalist parties.The

Scottish National Party's political program is dominated by economic issues,

particularly tax revenues from North Sea oil.The political agenda of Plaid Cymru, the

Welsh nationalist party, is mainly concerned with linguistic and cultural matters. In

both Scotland and Wales, the Labour Party is dominant, drawing strength from its

critique of the class privilege traditionally associated with London and southeastern

England. The dominance of the Labour Party in much of Wales and Scotland provides

conditions for patronage-style politics.

Ethnic Relations. A high degree of spatial integration is generally held to be

indicative of social integration, assimilation, and acculturation, while spatial segregation

is indicative of social pluralism. Non-European immigration in Britain has not moved

toward a pattern of sharply-defined urban ethnic ghettoes. Nevertheless, many non-

European immigrants continue to be subject to discriminatory practices in employment


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and in other spheres, even if systematic marginalization cannot be inferred from their

spatial distribution within the towns and cities of the nation.

Urbanism, Architecture, and theUse of Space

Rights to land development were in effect nationalized in 1947 by an act of Parliament

that removed the right of the owner of a piece of property to change its use and

transferred that power to the state. By the end of the twentieth century, 80 percent of

the land area was reserved for agricultural use but was responsible for less than 5

percent of the gross national product and less than 2 percent of employment, yet the

land-use planning system has continued to grow in size and power. Speculating in land

is big business, and the amount of land available for housing is so restricted that any

house within commuting range of a job will command a high price.

The countryside is increasingly seen as an aesthetic and recreational resource for people

who live in the towns and cities. However, this image of the countryside is very

expensive to maintain. The population is crowded together in towns on tiny plots of

land, while much of the open land is underpopulated and underused. Many people in

small

Cottages in Walthamstow Village, London, England. Housing in or near the cities is in

very high demand.

urban houses have high mortgages because of the cost of land.


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Food and Economy

Basic Economy. The United Kingdom has one of the largest economies in the world,

with a Gross National Product estimate in 1999 at $1.29 trillion (U.S.). Finance,

manufacturing, and trade form the base of the economy.The pound sterling is the

currency, and it is still being debated whether the nation will join with the its European

Union partners and adopt the Euro.

Commercial Activities. Banking and finance, including insurance, are mainstays of

the economy.

Major Industries. The United Kingdom is one of the most industrialized nations on

earth and has a strong manufacturing base. Major products include machine tools,aircraft and ships, motor vehicles, electronics, chemicals, coal, petroleum, textiles, and

food processing.

Trade. One of the leading trading powers in the world, the United Kingdom exported

$271 billion (U.S.) and imported $306 billion (U.S.) worth of goods in 1998. Chief

exports include manufactured goods, food, chemicals, and fuels. Manufactured goods,

machinery, fuel, and food products are imported. Primary trading partners are the

European Union and the United States.

Division of Labor. Although the nation produces almost two-thirds of its food needs,

in 1998, agriculture accounted for less than 2 percent of the workforce sector. Services

account for 73 percent, and industry another 25.3 percent.

Social Stratification

Classes andCastes. The idea of social class is much more powerful than that of

ethnicity. People frequently characterize themselves as working class or middle class.Although few admit to being upper class, in principle there are three classes, with the

highest one reserved for the aristocratic inheritors of old, landed wealth.The term

"social class" has complex meanings with social, economic, and political dimensions.

People who describe themselves as working class perceive themselves to have

respectable but unprivileged origins, and typically are born into a family supported by


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wages from industrial or agricultural labor paid in cash at the end of the week. In these

families neither parent has a college degree and the housing that the family occupies is

rented. There is a strong association between the idea of being working class and

supportive of the

Wide open grounds surround Belfast's Northern Ireland Parliament Building for

security reasons.

trade union movement and the Labour Party; the identification thus is with a set of

corporate or collective economic, social, and political interests and aspirations. A self-

described middle-class person has a social background and political attitudes that

suggest parents with white-collar jobs whose salaries are paid monthly by check and

who are likely to have professional or advanced education, to live in an owner-occupied

suburban house, and to have made strategic choices about their children's education.

They are likely to use their education and social skills for upward economic mobility and

to support the Conservative Party, which stresses self-sufficiency and individualism.

These differences have never been as clear-cut as the rhetoric of the main political

parties and professional critics of the social order have asserted. The concept of class has

recently fallen out of favor with politicians and sociologists as the nation's social and

economic structure has changed dramatically with deindustrialization and the growth of

social mobility and the knowledge economy.

Political Life


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Government. The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy. The monarch is chief

of state and the prime minister is head of government.The Cabinet of Ministers is

appointed by the prime minister and are responsible to Parliament. Parliament is

composed of the House of Lords (hereditary), the House of Commons (elected), and the

sovereign.

Leadership and Political Officials. The monarch reigns, but does not rule the

nation per se, acting only with the approval of Parliament.The prime minister holds the

executive power and is traditionally the leader of the majority party in Parliament.The

primary parties are the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, and the Liberal

Democrats.

Social Problems andControl. Each of the countries within the United Kingdom has

its own judicial system and courts.

Military Activity. The United Kingdom has a strong military, with an army, the

Royal Navy, and the Royal Air Force.The nation is an active participant in the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Social Welfare and Change Programs

The National Insurance, in operation since 1948, provides medical, unemployment,

maternity, and retirement benefits, among others. Employers and employees contribute

to this fund. The National


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City Hall in Cardiff, Wales.

Assistance Board provides financial assistance to the poor.

Gender Roles and Statuses

The Relative Status of Women and Men. In the 1970s, there were national

debates on the changing role of women in society and their women's employment

prospects. By the 1980s, the debate had shifted to the implications of the increasing

participation of women as the economy was restructured and the balance changed from

manufacturing to service occupations. In the 1990s, national debates concentrated on

the relationship between work, family life, consumption levels, and the socialization and

education of the next generation. Approximately half of British women work; of these,

half are part-time workers. Nevertheless, a significant gender divide persists in regard to

suitable occupations for men and women, access to occupations by women and men, pay

levels for similar kinds of work, and the allocation of domestic tasks. Although the ideal

of gender equality is widely shared, social behavior lags behind the ideal. For example,

75 percent of couples say that the preparation of the evening meal should be shared

equally, but only one-third of these couples live up to that ideal.

Marriage, Family, and Kinship

Marriage. Premarital sex and unmarried cohabitation are widely accepted even if they

are not liked by defenders of traditional family values. Single motherhood caused by


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unstable cohabiting relationships or marital breakdown is perceived as a major problem

because of its impact on the welfare budget rather than as a moral question.

Nonetheless, family relationships remain close. Roughly 70 percent of adults live within

an hour's journey of their parents or grown-up children, and nearly half see their

mothers, fathers, adult children, and best friends at least once a week. While newspaper

and television reports claim that the nuclear family is in decline because of increased

rates of unmarried cohabitation and divorce, personal commitment to kinship ties has

not changed much. Seventy percent of adults think that people should keep in touch

with close family members; 55 percent think that they should keep in touch with

relatives such as uncles, aunts, and cousins; 60 percent say that they would rather spend

time with relatives than with friends; and nearly 80 percent think relatives are more

important than friends.T

hese attitudes vary with age and genderpeople over ageforty-five tend to be more family-centered than are younger people.

Kin Groups. Family life is changing, and there are tensions between kinship ties and

some contemporary social values. However, the great majority of people perceive

themselves to be part of multigenerational families and regard these relationships as

very important.

Etiquette

The United Kingdom is a crowded country. People cope with this situation by being

reserved and diffident in public, politely ignoring strangers, quietly minding their own

business, and marking out and defending their private spaces, homes, and gardens.

They expect others to do the same.

Religion

Religious Beliefs. Since the 1950s, church adherence has fallen dramatically, and the

British are generally uninterested in formal religious practice. Sixty percent of adults do

not believe in God, and one-third have no religious affiliation.Thirty-six percent of the

population identifies with the official, state-sanctioned Church of England; 10 percent

with the Roman Catholic Church; 4 percent with Presbyterianism; 4 percent with

Baptism and Methodism; 3 percent with other Protestant denominations, and 3 percent


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with other religions. Four percent describe themselves as Christians, and 35 percent say

that they have no religion. Geographically, the Church of England is represented as the

Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Church of Ireland, and the Church in

Wales, but Anglicanism is the predominant church mainly in England. In Wales, there

was a strong nonconformist presence of Methodist and Baptist chapels whose

importance in local life has declined considerably since 1950; in Scotland and Northern

Ireland, Presbyterianism is strongly represented; and Roman Catholicism is significant

in Northern Ireland, the Western Isles of Scotland, parts of Lancashire and Sussex, and

cities where large numbers of nineteenth century Irish Catholic immigrants settled.

Only in Northern Ireland is religion strongly identified with political aspirations.

Medicine andHealth Care

The National Health Service, which was set up by an act of Parliament in 1947, gave

every resident access to free medical care. A system was created that operated local

public hospitals throughout the country and directly employed doctors, nurses, and

other health workers. Family doctors, specialists, and dentists also received payment

from the government for treating patients, although any doctor or patient can practice

privately or pay for private medical care. There have been continuing debates on the

level of care the service should provide and how it should be funded.The system was

intended to provide unlimited medical care to any patient, and the government

undertook to pay the full cost. In some ways, the service has been a victim of its own

success. Free medical care and successful efforts to promote better health, diet, and

working conditions have meant that people live much longer.The care of the frail

elderly has consumed an increasing amount of resources; as have advances in treating

diseases. Governments' attempts to control the costs of health care inevitably result in

the covert rationing of resources, which conflicts with the principle of the citizen's right

to high-quality free care when it is needed.

Secular Celebrations

The Celebration of the Birthday of the Queen is held on the second Saturday in June.

Other legal holidays include New Year's Day, Good Friday, Late Summer Holiday (the


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last Monday in August or the first in September), Christmas Day, and Boxing Day (26

December). Scotland and Northern Ireland, celebrate several of their own holidays.

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