International Journal of the Commons (Feb 2010)

A common claim: Community land ownership in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland

  • Fiona Douglas Mackenzie

DOI
https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.151
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 1
pp. 319 – 344

Abstract

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Working with Foucault’s and Butler’s theorisation of the norm and the political possibilities that may be created when norms are disrupted and Foucault’s and Gibson-Graham’s work on ethics and subjectivities, I focus in this paper on practices of property and nature when land in the Outer Hebrides is brought into community ownership. I argue that, while it is early to assess new political possibilities, there is sufficient evidence to show how a troubling of neoliberal norms of privatisation and enclosure through community land ownership provides a moment where a counterdiscourse is constituted. This counter narrative, centred on a collective subjectivity, opens up the possibility of more socially just and sustainable futures.

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