The Loyal Orange Institution in Scotland, 1799 to 1900
The thesis has a number of general aims, which range around conceptualising the Loyal Orange Institution [LOI] and laying it open for a fruitful theoretical approach. There is first in Section One, a demarcation of the object of study, drawing a rigorous line between the LOI and a much more indefinite body of militant Protestant and anti-Catholic sentiment. Following on from this, the causal regress is shifted beyond a commonsense attribution of 'sectarianism', and the conspiratorial or functionalist emphases which tend to dominate the existing literature. Generally more appropriate, in analysing Orangeism's progress in 19th century Scotland, is a conception of ideology which is structural and objective. Yet care is also taken here not to erase all instances of social control in the Movement's history. These, it is suggested, can be viewed as arising from basic inequalities of power in capitalism, in turn the result of economic inequalities and control of the state apparatus. A further difficulty with the more 'sophisticated' Marxist approach is also raised. For, if this is a better fit with Orangeism's political and ideological content; in its embracing of endemic fractionalisation of the proletariat, it
McFarland, E. W.
DA Great Britain ; HM Sociology
The Loyal Orange Institution in Scotland, 1799 to 1900. The thesis has a number of general aims, which range around conceptualising the Loyal Orange Institution [LOI] and laying it open for a fruitful theoretical approach. There is first in Section One, a demarcation of the object of study, drawing a rigorous line between the LOI and a much more indefinite body of militant Protestant and anti-Catholic sentiment. Following on from this, the causal regress is shifted beyond a commonsense attribution of 'sectarianism', and the conspiratorial or functionalist emphases which tend to dominate the existing literature. Generally more appropriate, in analysing Orangeism's progress in 19th century Scotland, is a conception of ideology which is structural and objective. Yet care is also taken here not to erase all instances of social control in the Movement's history. These, it is suggested, can be viewed as arising from basic inequalities of power in capitalism, in turn the result of economic inequalities and control of the state apparatus. A further difficulty with the more 'sophisticated' Marxist approach is also raised. For, if this is a better fit with Orangeism's political and ideological content; in its embracing of endemic fractionalisation of the proletariat, it
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