Places of Possibility: Property, Nature and Community Land Ownership

To maximize the efficiencies of land ownership, the market–driven approach of neoliberalism would have it placed entirely in the hands of the private sector. Places of Possibility reveals how community land ownership can open up the political, social, environmental, and economic terrain to far more socially just and sustainable possibilities than the privatization espoused by neoliberalism.

Drawing on comprehensive qualitative research carried out in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, environmental geography specialist A. Fiona D. Mackenzie argues that these possibilities are created through the disruption of prevalent norms of property and nature. The author shows how current land reforms taking place in the islands of the Outer Hebrides are revealed to be places of possibility where neoliberal norms of enclosure and privatization and of a nature separate from the social are unsettled with community land ownership. With a careful balance of original theoretical insights and intellectual rigor, Places of Possibility dispels prevailing notions of neoliberal globalization to reveal the rich political possibilities of community land ownership and its place in the twenty–first century world.

List of Maps viii

List of Photographs ix

List of Tables x

Acknowledgements xi

1 Placing Possibility 1

2 Working Property 34

3 Working Nature 79

4 Working the Wind 127

5 Working Places 175

6 Conclusion Working Possibilities 214

References 227

Index 248

A. Fiona D. Mackenzie is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and Honorary Professor, University of the Highlands and Islands. Professor Mackenzie has carried out in–depth qualitative research on the Isle of Harris, the Outer Hebrides, and is the author of Land, Ecology and Resistance in Kenya, 1880–1952 (1998).

This is rarely the stuff of academic study but is at the heart of Places of Possibility s profound ambitions and most important contribution: anticipating more socially, environmentally and economically generous postneoliberalisms.   (Antipode, 1 August 2013)