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*Thread* - Somebody asked for my thoughts on bringing the moor @LBuyout back into community ownership #LandReform. My remarks, based on the book “Soil and Soul”, will be of general nature. That’s because I’m neither well appraised of the situation nor has the community asked me. https://twitter.com/fultonius/status/1286182346111287296
1/8 My work, which is not the only approach, has focussed on challenging the legitimacy of landed power by questioning its plausibility structures. 1) Name power and what its abuses look like. 2) Reveal the psychology of how it oppresses. 3) Grow the courage to engage with it.
2/8 Paulo Freire of Brazil called this conscientisation - the raising of consciousness & social conscience. In my speeches etc. I focus on *delegitimising* unaccountable power. Making its structures visible. Questioning consent & internalised oppression: http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/articles/1998_slf.htm
3/8 Mahatma Gandhi spoke of both the “obstructive programme” in the early stages, then the “constructive programme” of building & implementing the vision. A community has to see & overcome the “Roman peace” of inauthentic $$$ social relations, such as landed power oft comprises.
4/8 At their own pace, communities can engage a low level but sustained obstructive relationship with power that it refuses to legitimise. But it must also constructively rebuild vision for itself and the land it rests in. The obstructive side can look like this
Constructive 
Constructive
5/8 By the way, that VQLI on the right was a form of participative inquiry we used in the South Pacific in the 1980s. The aim (at least, in my work) is to deepen folks’ recognition of needs, identity & belonging as a “community of place”. It opens inner gates of power & cohesion.
6/8 As for the question how to shift power over a grouse moor, it’s not for me to specify for @LBuyout. They’ll develop their own appropriate tactics. But as a generalisation, community-led ecological regeneration is a powerful cohering force. It invokes both love & beauty.
7/8 But the love of nature alone is not enough. To stop the monolith of landed power from splitting the community (
of Lewis land raiders) we must integrate both natural & human ecology. I understand such to be so with Langholm. Jobs, housing & business revenue streams too!
of Lewis land raiders) we must integrate both natural & human ecology. I understand such to be so with Langholm. Jobs, housing & business revenue streams too!
8/8 The guiding compass of community based #LandReform is: “Does it give life?”
What was once a grouse moor can give life to more than just a few birds bagged for “sport”. Bagged by those whose sole qualification is their wealth.
And Langholm... aye Scotland, Langholm has form.
What was once a grouse moor can give life to more than just a few birds bagged for “sport”. Bagged by those whose sole qualification is their wealth.
And Langholm... aye Scotland, Langholm has form.
