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Occupy! McDonagh and Griffin.pdf (349.75 kB)

Occupy! Historical geographies of property, protest and the commons, 1500-1850

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 00:36 authored by Briony McDonagh, Carl GriffinCarl Griffin
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.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Journal of Historical Geography

ISSN

0305-7488

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

53

Page range

1-10

Department affiliated with

  • Geography Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-03-21

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2018-04-23

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-03-21

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