http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.
1475-5661.2007.00279.x
To cite this article: Katrina Myrvang Brown
Understanding the materialities and moralities of property: reworking
collective claims to land
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (OnlineEarly
Articles).
doi:10.1111/j.1475-5661.2007.00279.x
Understanding the materialities and moralities of property: reworking
collective claims to land
* Katrina Myrvang Brown 11Macaulay Land Use Research Institute,
Craigiebuckler, Aberdeen AB15 8QH email: k.brown@???
*
1Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, Craigiebuckler,
Aberdeen AB15 8QH email: k.brown@???
key words Scotland property enactment moral geographies rural
commons
Abstract
The assertion of collective rights over land has been noted as a key
form of resistance to the enclosing propensities of globalisation.
However, insufficient attention is paid to the everyday practices of
property enactment that shape the ability to exercise, and benefit
from, rights within particular collective arrangements. This paper
uses the example of crofting common grazings to demonstrate how
struggles are invoked over the legibility and priority of legally
equivalent common property claims, and how such property relations
can be reworked as rural space is (re)produced. It highlights how
demographic change and shifting de/re-valorisation frontiers
problematise established material and moral grounds upon which
property rights are enacted, producing varying dynamics of intra-
collective (dis)enfranchisement. Such complexities preclude an
assumption that common property will be inherently ‘good’ or ‘just’,
and instead impel us to examine in more detail how processes at the
nexus of property, morality and materiality shape how ‘justice’ is
practised.
