CONFABULATIONS OF COMMUNITY - THE HAMEFARINS AND POLITICAL DISCOURSE ON SHETLAND

By comparing the two Hamefarin festivals held in 1960 and 1985 celebrating the organized visit of Shetland emigres back to Shetland, this paper examines the recent development of political technologies and administrative apparatuses associated with Shetland's local government and oil economy. It is suggested that this development has resulted in the confabulation of notions of traditional community and Shetland identity. Confabulation is described as the process whereby conceptions of formerly imagined social relations and invented traditions become a priori categories of planning and development, fetishized as part of an investment economy of culture. -Author