McDonagh, Briony and Griffin, Carl (2016) Occupy! Historical geographies of property, protest and the commons, 1500-1850. Journal of Historical Geography, 53. pp. 1-10. ISSN 0305-7488

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Abstract

This paper examines issues surrounding protest, trespass and occupation - brought to the fore as a result both of recent social movements including the global Occupy movement and of emerging critical discourses about so-called ‘new enclosures’ - through a historical lens. Wary of histories of property and protest that rely heavily on the notion of the ‘closing of the commons’, the authors present a different story about the solidification of property rights, the securitisation of space and the gradual emergence of the legal framework through which protest is now disciplined. They do so via an exploration of three episodes in the making of property in land and three associated moments of resistance, each enacted via the physical occupation of common land. The first examines strategies for opposing enclosure in early sixteenth-century England; the second considers the Diggers’ reimagining of property and the commons in the mid seventeenth century; and the third analyses the challenge to property rights offered by squatting and small-scale encroachments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In so doing, the paper begins to rethink the relations between past and contemporary protest, considering how a more nuanced account of the history of common rights, enclosure and property relations might nevertheless leave space for new solidarities which have the potential to challenge the exercise of arbitrary power.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	School of Global Studies > Geography
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D111 Medieval History D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D204 Modern History, 1453- D History General and Old World > DA History of Great Britain G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General) > G0001 Geography (General) > G0141 Historical geography H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Depositing User:	Carl Griffin
Date Deposited:	21 Mar 2016 08:22
Last Modified:	23 Apr 2018 01:00
URI:	http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/60091

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