Irony and Paradox in the Scottish Borderlands: Hill Sheep Farms and their Relations with the European Union and the United Kingdom

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the relations between hill sheep farms of the Scottish borderlands and the centralised, supra‐local institutions of the United Kingdom and European Union. Heidegger's notion of the ontology of technology is used to describe a common reference world in which these relations are conducted. Taking a critical stance towards characterising these relations as simply domination/dependence or penetration/resistance to capitalism, the article argues that they are multivalent and paradoxical. Hill sheep farms are conceived as a complex social field with a specific social gravity of values and regulative principles (Bourdieu 1988, 1990) that refracts the effects of agricultural policies and programs of the UK and European Union. The analysis identifies how different agricultural programs of the UK government and the European Union target different dimensions of hill sheep farming including its natural resource base, its business practices, its family organisation and its relations to the agricultural market; how farmers strategically respond to these programs; and how, through these responses, farmers establish paradoxical relations with the United Kingdom and the European Union.