Taking the example of leisure in rural Scotland this article makes a call for a renewed appreciation of a radical rural and a subsequent recognition of the potential for quiet politics. In doing so it addresses the overlooked, yet potentially progressive, even radical, nature of 'out-dwelling' as a political endeavour. These 'out-dwellings' are twofold, encompassing the distinct yet complementary cultures of Huts and Bothies in rural Scotland. There is within these cultures a rising tide of discontent with contemporary society and a subsequent push for change. These political eruptions emphasise the spatial politics of everyday leisure and land where alterity to the imagined geography of a static, wild, romantic Scotland, driven by the landedestates, emerges as a key driver for change. This argument for a radical rural will be structured around four themes; political 'out-dwelling', transgressive mobility, conspicuous consumption and land ownership.
This article considers the ideal of living simply, critically exploring the practical realisation that achieving simplicity in life is a complex and skill-laden business. Particular, localised versions of living simply are subject to consideration, centring on the lived experience of dwelling as exhibited in huts and bothies, a historic feature of contemporary rural landscapes in Scotland. The article considers the kinds of skilled practices associated with these built forms, and the embodied expertise understood by users and owners as emerging from time spent in simplified structures where modern conveniences do not come as standard. As such, it seeks to place skill within the 21st century but also question where skill is located physically, morally and imaginatively. In doing so, this discussion queries why a situated version of skill needs to be cast as personalised and place-based and subsequently introduces the adapted concept of a ‘skillscape’ after Ingold (2000).
This article seeks to review work broadly defined as the historical geographies of mountaineering and climbing. As such, it outlines the links between mountaineering, colonialism, and vertical ascent as well as the historical geographies of rock climbing which speak to the culture, practices, and technologies of climbing. In outlining past work, particular attention is paid to the hidden and gendered histories of climbing and mountaineering. This moves discussion beyond common place tales of white privilege and Western philosophies of conquer through ascendancy to tackle the broader ways by which mountaineering and climbing have been explored by academic geography. A holistic appreciation of work on this topic, it is argued, can not only help the geographical discipline to deal with its colonial past but also show how the historical geographies of mountaineering and climbing fit within efforts to decolonise the discipline, include wider voices, and utilise archives unknown.
This article considers a unique type of book: the ‘bothy book’. These are cultural artefacts formed within bothies, simple shelters which now form a historic feature of the contemporary Scottish rural landscape. These books stress the co-mingling of person and place where environments are continually made, and remade, created and shaped, through the practices users are part of, and party to. These books push the boundaries of Ogborn and Withers’, ‘geographies of the book’, opening this subfield to these conflicting circumstances and new ‘books’ to be studied. These books are also thoroughly entangled in the ‘dwelling’ lifeworld of these buildings and hence are both representational and performative as well as material objects. This larger problematic is traced in this article through the narratives of bothy users, using their words to provide insight into dwelling in such buildings and, through this, the overarching relationship between ‘Hut Thought Word’.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.