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

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• commons
• land management
• governance
• collective action