Beyond the buyout: the mundane labour of subject formation and environmentality in Scottish community land ownership

The ecological crisis is fundamentally a crisis of relationship: while societies are profoundly influenced by the physical landscapes that they inhabit, they also actively transform them. Historic Western conceptualisations of land have failed to ‘respect’ this reciprocity, resulting in private ownership systems that enable resource degradation, social exclusion, and the commodification of nature. Consequently, Scotland’s legislative framework for community land ownership (CLO) presents an opportunity to challenge these extractive relationships born from traditional ownership. Existing scholarship has focused on the economic case for CLO and the mechanics of legal acquisition, however current discourse fails to appreciate how the post-acquisition lived reality actually shapes human-land relations. This research uses cross-sectional qualitative fieldwork across three distinct Scottish buyouts (Isle of Eigg, Evanton Community Wood, and the Langholm Initiative) to demonstrate that socio-ecological relationships are shaped less by legal title and more by the unglamorous, day-to-day work of administration and maintenance. Although adopting these ‘mundane responsibilities’ creates institutional strain, they act as a central mechanism for collective subject formation and a highly localised ‘environmentality’. Ultimately, by grounding these relational dynamics in the tangible labour of local land stewardship, this study illustrates how CLO can reconfigure landed relationships for a more ecologically just future.