The Highland Alternative by Steven Speed

The Highland Alternative by Steven Speed

The Highland Alternative examines how small-scale farming communities in Scotland's Highlands and Islands, through a combination of food sovereignty, agroecology, and land sovereignty, have developed alternatives to capitalist agriculture making them more resilient to recent crises of capitalism such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

From 15 months of research conducted with 14 small-scale food producers in Scotland, this book reveals how communities not only survived recent crises but strengthened their autonomy by reducing dependency on global supply chains. Drawing on Erik Olin Wright, David Harvey and John Holloway's analyses of capitalism and strategies of social transformation, the author examines the unintended trajectories of change that emerge from the crisis of capitalism, the gaps and contradictions these crises have revealed, the relationships between these strategies and crises as they reveal alternative economic practices, and the sustainability of these practices against capitalism's ability to reproduce itself. In doing so, the book explores historical trajectories from the Highland Clearances to contemporary challenges, examining transformative strategies including community land ownership, direct sales networks, and regenerative farming practices that create alternative economic relationships.

This forward-thinking study will appeal to postgraduate students and scholars in sociology, political economy, human geography, and social movements studies interested in alternatives to capitalism, social and environmental sustainability, and food systems. It will also appeal to practitioners in social movement organizations, NGOs focused on environmental justice, and activists interested in sustainable agriculture and community resilience strategies.

‘What might a sustainable alternative to capitalist agriculture look like? How might it contribute to strategies for the wholesale transformation of our economic system? In this illuminating volume Steven Speed documents the grounded solutions to the fundamental problem of subsistence found by small-scale food producers, arguing that capitalism’s crises open doors for modes of food production that begin to free communities from the exploitation and alienation associated with capitalist production’

Kevin Gillan, Director of Sociology PGT Programmes at University of Manchester, UK.

‘Drawing on rich research with crofters and small-scale food producers across the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, it provides a fascinating account of how community land ownership, common resources, local food networks, and shared responsibilities can sustain greater autonomy and resilience. Speed avoids romanticising these practices, carefully examining both their transformative potential and the tensions they confront, resulting in an insightful and empirically grounded analysis of how alternative moral economies are created and sustained through everyday relationships with land, food and community.’

Camilo Tamayo Gomez, Reader at University of Huddersfield, President of ISA Research Committee on Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change, UK.

‘Speed shows convincingly how the experiences of small-scale farming communities in Scotland may prove instructive for wider debates about capitalism and social transformation, bringing his study into dialogue with the work of Erik Olin Wright, David Harvey and John Holloway. He demonstrates how agroecology, food sovereignty and land sovereignty may have the potential to resist, and perhaps reverse, the reproduction of capitalist social relations, thus producing a compelling account of how alternative economic and social practices emerge through everyday struggles for autonomy, subsistence and collective control.’

Benjamin Abrams, Associate Professor at UCL, UK.

‘Marxism is a living tradition, continually shaped and inspired by concrete conditions and collective struggles, with the aim of improving people’s conditions of life. Food is a fundamental part of those conditions. By examining struggles over food through a Marxist framework, this book reveals the transformative potential of strategies that enable people to produce, distribute and collaborate beyond capitalist logics, toward building dignified lives.’

Simin Fadaee, President of the ISA Research Committee on Social Classes and Social Movements, UK.

Steven Speed is Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Anthropology at University of Greater Manchester, United Kingdom.