‘The Cheviot, the Stag … and the White, White Rock?’: Community, Identity, and Environmental Threat on the Isle of Harris

Abstract

In this paper I examine the process through which different claims to ‘development’ and ‘sustainability’ were made during a recent public inquiry into an application for a coastal superquarry at Lingerbay, Isle of Harris. On the one hand, a modernist discourse of sustainable development was claimed by a corporation which attempted to frame the debate in terms of jobs versus environment, exploiting rhetorically a difference between islander and incomer. Sustainable development here became the front for an extension of corporate interest and private property. On the other hand, members of the local community drew on historically resilient symbols of collective identity, crofting, the Gaidhealtacht, and observance of the Sabbath, to claim an alternative discourse of sustainability.