Sustainability in the Scottish HighlandsA Critical Ethnography of a Community Biosphere

Explores ways to create more just and sustainable futures for people and nature through lessons from a community-governed Biosphere in the Scottish Highlands

• Discusses the case of Wester Ross Biosphere a community-led UNESCO designation for sustainability in the Scottish Highlands. Chapters focus on diverse issues including crofting, Gaelic language, food, tourism and land ownership
• Brings together historical analysis of the Scottish Highlands with contemporary global sustainability challenges
• Introduces novel critical theoretical and conceptual approaches (such as anarchism and assemblage thinking) to Biosphere Reserve research
• Based on ethnographic data collected in person and online, before, during and after the Covid-19 pandemic
• Utilises an interdisciplinary body of critical research from critical heritage studies, environmental sociology, human geography and political ecology on nature-culture relations, community, heritage and sustainability
  

This book addresses the topic of sustainability in the Scottish Highlands, offering a critical ethnography of the Wester Ross UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. It explains what the UNESCO designation means in theory and practice and the community governance model adopted. Framed by critical theory, it unpacks the idea of the Biosphere as an alternative to ‘common sense’, a way to overcome the nature–culture dichotomy and capitalist, colonial ideologies.

Zoe Malcolm outlines negotiations of nature–culture relationships, power and scale, focusing on actors within the Biosphere and situating these perspectives in wider national and international contexts. She explores examples such as tourism and place-making, community empowerment, nature conservation, heritage conservation, Gaelic language, crofting and land ownership.