Scottish Highlands campervan mobilities in pandemic times: Enclosures

Stanley, Phiona

Abstract

This paper explores the idea of ‘enclosures’ as encircling lines. These include semantic boundaries, insider-outside binaries, and the grey area that includes the technically-illegal and the rarely-actually-prosecuted, focusing on ‘wild’ campervanning in the Scottish Highlands. Also considered are non-enclosures: common grazing, faraway gazes for driving on single-track roads, and alone-time in a campervan that is not easily regimented into work and life. This paper thinks with Tim Ingold’s work on lines, showing how the ‘ghostly lines’ of social imaginaries are changing in light of Covid-19. Lockdowns lead to staycations, which lead to overcrowding in the Highlands. Thus, previously elastic lines are drawn tighter, and grey areas coalesce into lines that are more obviously and more problematically crossed.

Citation

Stanley, P. (2022). Scottish Highlands campervan mobilities in pandemic times: Enclosures. Journal of Autoethnography, 3(3), 398-401. https://doi.org/10.1525/joae.2022.3.3.398

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 6, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Jul 1, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022
• Deposit Date: Apr 7, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 1, 2022
• Journal: Journal of Autoethnography
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 398-401
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/joae.2022.3.3.398
• Keywords: campervan tourism, Scottish Highlands, Scottish land ownership, Right to Roam
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2862397