Volume 5 issue 1 february 2018
Beneath the City: The Forest! Civic Commons as Practice and Critique
ANNE BOTTOMLEY
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In 2017 we could, as critical law scholars, have been recovering and celebrating the Charter of the Forests, signed in 1217, two years after Magna Carta. There has, instead, been almost total silence. The anniversary of Magna Carta received some recognition (albeit much from an American-inspired celebration of constitutional ‘roots’); but the anniversary of the Forest Charter, so significant for protecting access to the forests under common rights, has been virtually unnoticed. It is the argument of this paper that critical law scholars, and all those interested in developing and promoting alternative property practices, should recover and celebrate the Charter—not simply for what it stood for historically, but for its relevance today as a signifier of counter-practices and counter-narratives to the dominant narratives of property, specifically the dominant-narrative of private property framed through ownership.
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