Use of the countryside by the urban state: Scotland's North‐West seaboard and islands

This paper addresses the themes and sources of conflict and ambivalence over rural and agricultural policy planning in the north‐west of Scotland. It outlines the context of the present conservation debate, identifying conflicts which arise out of various polarities between people who use the landscape: rural against urban, Highlander against Anglo‐Scot, Londoner against provincial, part‐time farmers against economists focused on full‐time agriculture. These conflicts occur within a legal and political framework which skews access to power toward the urban and southern elite. This dominant group perceives the north‐west Highlands as a peripheral, and therefore naturally subject, area. Environmental conservation is a new factor in what was an historically‐based problem. Conservationists are not fully integrated into any one group, but may become part of the dominant power‐structure. Evidence is presented to show the skewed structure of dominance over land use in the north‐west Highlands, and to show how conservation is seen to fit in that structure. Generally, it is concluded that in order to conserve the environment, the traditional patterns of dominance may have to be reversed and the area redefined as a centre rather than as a periphery.