Scottish community land initiatives: going beyond the locality to enable local empowerment

Abstract

SummaryThis paper employs Gaventa's 'powercube' framework to examine how the Scottish community land movement has woven together different forms and sources of power in pursuit of local development. It finds that, while localism is a strong element in community land action, connections to institutions operating at wider spatial levels have been vital to the growth of the movement. It explores the Scottish Highlands and Islands context that has facilitated these connections. It also discusses the movement's relationship with states and markets, noting both its emergence in the context of their perceived failures, but also analysing its engagement with them. It draws on primary research carried out by the author in Scotland, including ethnographic research into the working of two community land initiatives at local level, and into the community land movement more widely. It concludes with some remarks about community-led development, states and austerity; and contemporary developments in Scotland.

Rural social entrepreneurship: The role of social capital within and across institutional levels

“…Building on recent multilevel conceptualisations in geography and planning (Lang and Novy, 2014;Agger and Jensen, 2015;Braunholtz-Speight, 2015), we theorise that rural social entrepreneurs represent intermediate actors in the spatial hierarchy who can establish a link between local rural communities and key resource holders in the wider institutional environment.…”

“…As embedded actors, rural social entrepreneurs encounter different placed-based expectations of network actors and thus different degrees of social legitimacy (Giuliani, 2003;Kibler et al, 2014). In our analytical model (see Figure 1), social legitimacy refers to the perceived degree to which residents of a local community as well as regime actors socially approve and desire the development of the rural social business in the locality (Bitektine and Haack, 2015;Kibler et al, 2014;2015). Previous research suggests that such place-based social legitimacy is related to the degree and nature of the entrepreneur's attachment to the place, that is, how much the entrepreneur cares about the local community within which the venturing activity is embedded .…”

Grassroots innovations in community-led housing in England: the role and evolution of intermediaries

“…However, these intermediaries appear to be closer to the niche than to the regime level in the MLP terminology. Previous research has highlighted the crucial role these intermediaries play in establishing links between niche actors and regime resource holders in the multi-level institutional environment (Agger & Jensen, 2015;Braunholtz-Speight, 2015;Author et al, 2014). Such niche intermediaries deploy bridging capital as they learn, network and develop expectations between each other.…”

Putting community to use in environmental policy making: Emerging trends in Scotland and the UK

“…Questions of the scale of environmental governance also overlap with questions of justice to some extent. Community ownership is seen as moving power away from distant decision‐makers (private or public sector) and vesting it in local residents, and is therefore sometimes analysed in terms of decentralisation of power and democratisation of natural resources (Braunholtz‐Speight, , ; Hoffman, ). Others connect such actions to wider scales, as part of a Scotland‐wide narrative of struggles over land rights (Wightman, ), inequality in the UK housing market (Ryan‐Collins et al, ), or in the context of global resistance to neoliberal and modernist ideas about property and nature (MacKenzie, ; McIntosh, ).…”

“…vesting it in local residents, and is therefore sometimes analysed in terms of decentralisation of power and democratisation of natural resources (Braunholtz-Speight, 2015a, 2015bHoffman, 2013). Others connect such actions to wider scales, as part of a Scotland-wide narrative of struggles over land rights (Wightman, 2010)…”