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

McDonagh, Briony; Griffin, Carl J.

Authors

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Professor Briony McDonagh B.McDonagh@hull.ac.uk
Interim Director of the Energy and Environment Institute & Professor of Environmental Humanities

Carl J. Griffin



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.

Citation

McDonagh, B., & Griffin, C. J. (2016). Occupy! Historical geographies of property, protest and the commons, 1500-1850. Journal of Historical Geography, 53, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2016.03.002

Acceptance Date Mar 11, 2016
Online Publication Date Apr 22, 2016
Publication Date Jul 1, 2016
Deposit Date Mar 24, 2016
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Journal of historical geography
Print ISSN 0305-7488
Electronic ISSN 1095-8614
Publisher Elsevier
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 53
Pages 1-10
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2016.03.002
Keywords Protest movements; Occupy movement; Political participation
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/434147
Publisher URL http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305748816000268
Additional Information This is a description of an article which has been published in: Journal of historical geography, 2016, v.53

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