Land for what? Land for whom? Bonnie VandeSteeg
A thoughtful celebration of the Highlands of Scotland, both its people, including visitors who love the area, and its nature, Land for What? Land for Whom? is based on years of detailed ethnographic research in the Cairngorms. Exploring the many and varied conflicts between livelihood, recreation and conservation, Bonnie VandeSteeg expresses the views, concerns and feelings of people in the area, particularly those who often go unheard. She places them at the front of her study and considers how their differences might be overcome to ensure the future well-being of both people and planet.
The Poor had no Lawyers and Who owns Scotland - Andy Wightman
Who owns Scotland? How did they get it? What happened to all the common land in Scotland? Has the Scottish Parliament made any difference? Can we get our common good land back? In ‘The Poor had no Lawyers’, Andy Wightman updates the statistics of landownership in Scotland and explores how and why landowners got their hands on the millions of acres of land that were once held in common.
Soil and Soul - Alastair McIntosh
In ‘Soil and Soul’, Alastair McIntosh recounts his childhood on Lewis and how the old ways of life there were extinguished by global capitalism. As a founder of the Isle of Eigg Trust, Alastair helped the beleaguered residents of Eigg to become the first Scottish community ever to clear their laird from his own estate. He tells the story of the campaign for the first community buy out in Scotland and resisting the opening of a superquarry on his home island of Lewis. Alastair brings together ecology, spirituality, history and politics to convey his vision for sustainable communities and places.
The Making of the Crofting Community – James Hunter
This book has been seminal in bringing to the fore the injustices that have been inflicted on the Highlands in the name of government and landlord - injustices often lost in the name of dry statistics and academic balance. Written by a man who has gone on to become both an award-winning historian of the Highlands and a leading figure in the public life of the region, "The Making of the Crofting Community" has attracted praise, inspired debate, and provoked outrage and controversy over the years. This book remains necessary to challenge standard academic interpretations of the Highland past.
On the Other Side of Sorrow: Nature and People in the Scottish Highlands – James Hunter
Caring for the environment, developing rural communities, and ensuring the survival of minority cultures are all laudable objectives, but they can conflict, and nowhere more so than the Scottish Highlands. As environmentalists strive to preserve the scenery and wildlife of the Highlands, the people who belong there, and who have their own claims on the landscape, question this new threat to their culture, which dates back thousands of years. In this book, James Hunter probes deep into this culture to examine the dispute between Highlanders, who developed a strong environmental awareness a thousand years before other Europeans, and conservationists, whose thinking owes much to the romantic ideals of the nineteenth century.
The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil - John McGrath
John McGrath's winding, furious, innovative play tracks the economic history and exploitation of the Scottish Highlands from the post-Rebellion suppression of the clans to the story of the Clearances: in the 19th century, aristocratic landowners discovered the profitability of sheep farming, and forced a mass emigration of rural Highlanders, burning their houses in order to make way for the Cheviot sheep.
