ABSTRACT
The research presented in this book is premised on the understanding that cultural assumptions concerning the value of common land are not stable but have changed across the centuries, with profound consequences for the law, for land management and for the exercise of common rights. The distinctive legal status of ‘common’ land poses a puzzle for a society in which concepts of private property are dominant, giving rise to a series of tensions that have emerged at different times: between public and private rights and interests; between concepts of common rights as appurtenant to property and as personal rights; between limitations on their use based on necessity and commercial exploitation. The sustainable governance of common land therefore presents us with a complex set of problems reflecting many conflicting interests – public and private, national and local, recreational and economic, ecological and agricultural, to name but a few. Common land is, in this sense, a truly ‘contested’ resource. The ‘stakeholders’ of today – whether land users, policy-makers or the public – are the inheritors of this complex cultural legacy, and must negotiate diverse and sometimes conflicting objectives in their pursuit of a potentially unifying goal: a secure future for the commons.
