An Uncommon Land
I recently read the proofs of a book to provide comment on it. An Uncommon Land: From An Ancestral Past of Enclosure Towards a Regenerative Future, by environmental historian Dr Catherine Knight, has now been published.
As I said in my comments on it, this is highly original, intriguing and excellent work of scholarship that looks to the past to provide a pathway to a sustainable and fairer future. It weaves together family histories of migration into broader themes of colonisation, the commodification of land and climate change, and argues that we should look to the concept of the commons as a way of managing finite environmental resources for the benefit of all.
The invasion of Waikato and the environmental consequences of that, including the drainage of precious wetlands systems like Whangamarino, also feature. But because it hasn’t come from one of the big publishing houses, you might not hear so much about the book. So I’ve set out the blurb and press release below. There’s also a trailer you can watch.
An Uncommon Land is a story of enclosure, dispossession, colonisation and – ultimately – hope for a better future. Through the lens of her ancestors’ stories, Catherine Knight throws light on the genesis and evolution of the commons, its erosion through enclosure and the ascendency of private property in parallel with the rise of capitalism – a history that has indelibly shaped New Zealand society and its landscape.
Like other European settlers, the lives and future prosperity of the author’s ancestors had their foundations in war, land appropriation and environmental destruction – but in their histories lie glimmerings of the potentiality of commons: tantalising hints of an alternative path to a re-commoned, regenerative future.
At this pivotal juncture in our history, we face unprecedented challenges caused by our exploitative actions towards nature and each other. But we have a choice: to continue along the path of untrammelled exploitation and exponential growth, or to reassess the way we engage with the natural world and the rest of society. From a past of enclosure, resource exploitation and denaturing, we could choose a path of re-commoning and regeneration, taking inspiration from our collective history. -Blurb
Recent global events show how our world risks unravelling, but also offer an opportunity to consider a different path. And our past may reveal surprising insights that guide us to a better future, says the author of a new book drawing on her own ancestral history.
Through the lens of her ancestors’ stories, award-winning author and environmental historian Catherine Knight examines how shared access to natural resources has been eroded through the expansion of private property in parallel with the rise of capitalism.
“I became fascinated with understanding the ambitions and values that my own ancestors brought with them to Aotearoa New Zealand, and even more intriguingly, what values and notions were left behind. One of those notions that was discarded was the commons – instead, New Zealand’s colonial society and landscape was shaped by ideas of private property, productivity and wealth creation,” Dr Knight says.
“Like other European settlers, the lives and future prosperity of my ancestors had their foundations in war, land appropriation, and environmental destruction.
“This was difficult to contemplate, but in their stories also lie tantalising hints of an alternative path to a ‘re-commoned’ and regenerative future,” she says.
Knight says her book An Uncommon Land: From an ancestral past of enclosure towards a regenerative future is an invitation to explore our ancestral past – to understand how we got to this point, but also to discover the lodestars that might guide us to a different future.
“Through this book, which is deeply personal, I am inviting New Zealanders to reassess the world we live in today by reflecting on our own ancestral past.
“Is it really so radical to contemplate a society which carefully regulates the use of common resources, lives within limits, and values social connection rather than the accumulation of material possessions, when these were commonplace features of our own ancestors’ lives just a couple of generations ago?”
Dr Knight says that the disruptive effects of recent global events show just how fragile our economy and society is, but also offer a salutary prompt to reassess how we live.
“We are entangled in a complex web of global finance, geopolitics and trade and we’re now seeing how this web can unravel at the whim of just one man, with disastrous consequences,” she says.
“We have reached this point after centuries of imperial expansion, colonisation, enclosure of land and resources, and the pervasion of an ethos that celebrates pursuit of wealth and profit at whatever cost.
“But the cost has become starker – and more unsettling – for many of us. We’re facing a dangerously heating planet, oceans swirling with garbage, plummeting biodiversity, human society ravaged by preventable lifestyle diseases.
“Many people, like me, are questioning: is this the future we want for our children, or their children?”
Dr Knight says her ancestors benefited directly from a system in which both land and its people were colonised and enclosed.
“But it is my interpretation, perhaps naïvely, that they did not deliberately set out to exploit the situation – they simply accepted it without questioning the consequences.
“In this sense, there are striking parallels with the circumstances in which we find ourselves today; we have become unwitting but quite willing participants in a socioeconomic system that perpetuates untold harm on the planet while continuing to entrench and exacerbate inequity and injustice.”
Ultimately the book suggests we have a choice: to continue along the path of untrammelled exploitation and exponential growth, or to reassess the way we engage with the natural world and the rest of society.
“If my book provides the opportunity for people to explore their own ancestral past, and use the insights gained to reflect on where we are today and what sort of future society we want, I will be delighted and humbled”, Knight says.
For more information see the book website.
Aku mihi
Vincent O’Malley