Community cohesion: constructing boundaries between or within communities-of-place?

This paper is concerned with how communities are constructed symbolically and the relation between such symbolically constructed communities and communities-ofplace. Analysis of literature on the symbolic construction of Scottish communities shows that the boundaries of these communities do not necessarily coincide with the boundaries of the geographically defined community-of-place. People identify, and are identified, with more than one community, and such identification is temporary in character. Which community is identified with is dependent on the specific time, place, group of people and activities engaged in.