Disobedient Objects: material readings of enclosure protest in sixteenth-century

McDonagh, Briony

Abstract

Responding to calls for scholars to address ‘material worlds’ in our analyses of protests past, the paper examines the more-than-human historical geographies of enclosure and enclosure protest in sixteenth-century England. It argues that negotiating enclosure – in the sense of both promoting and resisting private property rights – was dependent on particular assemblages of people, animals and things and their convergence within specific spaces and temporalities. Particular attention is paid to mundane and everyday objects entangled in enclosure protest and the ways these assemblages might transform objects’ meanings, rendering them threatening or disobedient. Moreover, repurposing these things offered opportunities to re-make space, concretising or resisting particular claims to access or possession at the local level. It contributed too to the ongoing debate out of which new concepts of property eventually emerged, so that interrogating the materialities of enclosure protest offers vital space in which to rethink the makings of our modern world.

Citation

McDonagh, B. (in press). Disobedient Objects: material readings of enclosure protest in sixteenth-century. Journal of Medieval History,

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 11, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Mar 26, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jan 31, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 27, 2020
• Print ISSN: 0304-4181
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: enclosure; landscape; protest; more-than-human; things
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/1252616