ABSTRACT
This chapter uses this early instance of the invocation and expansion of the language and practice of commoning beyond its original object of to work alongside the author's own ethnographic examples. It explains that 'the commons' back into popular talk and action, mobilised around what was, is, or ought to be conceived as shared. This includes attention to the issues of expulsion around the condition of property ownership but also the threats of expulsion identified around states of 'public property'. The chapter explores the commonalities that can emerge through the celebration of shrinkage or the conversion of inherently public property into single ownership. The Land Reform Act went a good deal further in opening land to public use than the equivalent law in England and Wales. The chapter draws the long-standing anthropological research in Britain concerns two discontinuous projects: a study of right-wing libertarian activism in London and a study of animal welfare campaigners in Edinburgh.
