Reclaiming Wet History: Examining Peat to Uncover Suppressed Highlander Environmental Perspectives

• In Event: Interrogating Naturalization and Romanticization in Rural Extractive Environments: The American Midwest and Scotland

Abstract

In the Scottish Highlands lies a vast expanse of wetland. The Flow Country is the largest blanket bog in Europe, yet it exists beyond popular environmental consciousness. This is unsurprising, for obscure landscapes such as the Flow Country are seldom valued due to their exclusion from industry and economic activity.

I argue in this paper, historic attitudes that emerged during the colonization of the Highlands in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries are at the root of apathy toward and obscurity of mires and bogs. Eventually, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Highlander environmental beliefs were ultimately eradicated as social and economic forces eliminated generations of traditional land practices. The bogs of the Highlands were understood as an integral component of human and ecological relationships by traditional inhabitants. But, Highlander environmental thinking was in opposition to predominant views in a time of resource exploitation. Ongoing conflict fed a suite of socio-cultural shifts that altered Scottish land practices, radically transforming the landscape, namely from the aftermath of Christian missions, Highland clearances and resulting processes of deforestation and extensive grazing.

I argue that analyzing this history and examining suppressed Highland environmental perspectives sheds light on how this environment was understood before its recharacterization through the eyes of Christian colonizers—a view which has shaped this marginalized landscape and its place in the popular imagination. I examine the writing and contrasting positionality of the Highlanders and British through queer ecological, ecocritical, and STS perspectives. To overcome the limitations imposed by colonial paradigms, these frameworks acknowledge the loss of Highlander environmentalists and aim to develop more radical models of empathy and coexistence with the environment. This study examines how different cultural attitudes in Scotland shaped human perception and feelings towards now-ostracized landscapes, advocating a paradigm shift toward deeper connections to nonhuman environments.

Author

• Christianna Bennett, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute