Description
As land in the Uk is increasingly consolidated for conservation and rewilding, counter movements propose alternative visions, which instead emphasise the ecologies of communities rooted to the land. But, by evoking notions of ancestral belonging and indigeneity in the UK, these movements risk reasserting the whiteness of rural places and reproducing exclusionary notions of belonging. This project will employ a comparative, qualitative research design to examine these narratives embedded in the ecological visions of two case studies.
The first case study is in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, where land justice campaigners assert the ecologies of ancestral belonging to the land through the Gaelic term ‘Dùthchas’. However, even in resistance to colonial-capitalist land ownership, given the implicit whiteness of ‘Dùthchas’, these narratives risk erasing the non-white communities of the Gaidhealtachd.
The far-right group Patriotic Alternative have begun buying land in Wales through ‘the Woodlands Initiative’. While this second case study also positions itself as offering a counter ecological vision to colonial-capitalist conservation and rewilding, they invoke notions of ancestral belonging to the land, with the explicit intension of creating white only communities. Its leader frames this strategy as part of a broader mission to establish “Indigenous heartlands” across the UK, demonstrating how notions of land-based rootedness are also central to the far-right imaginary and corresponds to old forms of ‘blood and soil’ nationalism (Lubarada, 2020).
Drawing on decolonial ecofeminist theory, I will conduct a critical discourse analysis of movement materials, including missions statements, activist online communications and campaign materials. I will examine how racialised and gendered ideas of belonging are constructed, mobilised, and contested and identify alternative frameworks for land redistribution and rural repeopling that challenge exclusionary visions and foster more just and inclusive environmental futures.
