Agricultural History Review, Volume 60 Part 1 (2012), p. 137

The commons have occupied a central place in the lives and minds of past generations, and continue to do so today. As much a cultural and symbolic landscape as it is an economic resource, the history of common land is an amalgam of competing interests and identities that have developed and shifted over time and place. However, if the commons are to be protected and managed for future generations, the mediation of conflicting interests among resource users together with the application of appropriate management schemes is a pressing challenge. Contested common land is the outcome of an innovative interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars from the disciplines of history and law. The book reveals the importance and great potential of developing interdisciplinary research that pays attention to temporal depth and micro-scale analyses in order to inform present policy-making in ways that will have lasting effect. Published at an important time, following the Commons Act of 2006, the work explores ways to secure and strengthen sustainable management systems that will ensure the protection of ecologically sensitive environments while balancing agricultural and recreational interests. Drawing on a rich body of archival material and fieldwork together with contemporary research on modern stakeholders’ views and often conflicting agendas, the authors show the value and prudence of unpicking the entangled meanings and relationships between legal and ‘idealized’ concepts of property and cultural conceptions of common land.

Following an introductory chapter, which introduces key aims and methodologies, the book is divided into three parts, each subdivided into chapters exploring the historical and modern dimensions of common land management. Part one, entitled ‘Custom, property rights and sustainable management’, is primarily concerned with governance strategies and institutional frameworks within which tensions and conflicts over access and land use rights have been mediated. Chapters two and three deal with customary and local governance strategies in historical context and highlight, in particular, the social and cultural significance of the commons and regulation of rights through principles of good neighbourliness. Chapters three and four shift the emphasis to modern notions of property rights and institutional governance, which is often closely aligned with environmental legislation. In this, the authors offer an assessment of the 2006 Act in view of wider international debates and especially following Elinor Ostrom’s work on the governance of common pool resources (CPRs). Part two applies the methodological approaches discussed in preceding chapters to four case studies, from Cumbria, North Yorkshire, Norfolk, and Wales. Each chapter explores the development of common rights since the sixteenth century, and subsequent impact of the Commons Registration Act of 1965. A linking theme to emerge from these micro-studies is that notwithstanding the compulsory registration of common rights, local custom and pragmatism continue to influence farming practices. The concluding part of the book outlines the key themes of common land governance, and discusses the social construction of law and custom, as well as some of the implications the research has for wider debates concerning the institutional governance of CPRs. Some of the technical and legal language is challenging at times and a glossary of terms and acronyms would have provided useful reference for the reader.

Throughout the volume the authors demonstrate the importance of attending to both historical depth and environmental diversity. The authors argue against static, one-dimensional governance systems, as reflected in the 1965 Commons Act, which fail to take into account the particularities of different locales and the long-term impact of human activities and responses to management and change. Of particular interest to this reader is that local customs and traditional farming practices continue into the modern day to contradict and subvert formal legal requirements, as stated in the 1965 Act. Customs are an inherently adaptable and flexible system of local practices developing out of social as well as economic pragmatism, and are typically viewed as being eroded by the legal concepts of private property that have emerged since the sixteenth century. The evidence presented here sheds light on the development and reformation of customary practices beyond the eighteenth century. The authors show how space has been created by the Commons Act of 2006, for the emergence of a more dynamic interplay of property rights allowing for greater flexibility and diversity for the representation of customary practices.

The work is a timely contribution of interest to a wide readership concerned with issues of environmental sustainability, the evolution of institutional governance systems, the history of English and Welsh commons and our historic landscape more generally.