'Decommonising the Mind':Historical impacts of British imperialism on indigenous tenure systems and self-understanding in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland

Common pool resource theory appears to assume that external authorities are responsible for initiating attempts to ‘decommonise’ common property regimes. An unusual decommonisation proposal put forward in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in the 1960s questions this assumption; in this instance the decommonisation proposal was initiated by rightsholders in the common property regime. The proposal would have enabled rightsholders to purchase their arable fields, thus privatising them and removing them from the hybrid tenure system called crofting. A critical historical and contemporary survey of the political contexts surrounding this proposal discloses that the particular hybridity of the ‘crofting commons’ is a result of a historical process of ‘domestic colonization’ within Britain, and that this tenure system exists within a deeply-sedimented structure of domination whose normative assumptions may have influenced the decision of the rightsholders to propose decommonisation in the first place

Recognising and reconstituting Gàidheil ethnicity

This article analyses some claims made about the Gàidheal identity in Scotland, with particular reflection on a distinct ‘sociolinguistic turn’ within Gàidhlig studies and related research over the last two decades. Through critical analysis of a major sociological survey on the structuring of various markers in framing Gàidheal identity, a normative basis is provided to then assess other identity classifications made by some academics whose work is focussed on the single identity-marker of the Gàidhlig language. It is argued that identity claims predicated on the specific nature of the Gàidhlig sociolinguistic turn fail to capture the complex reality and living histories of actual Gàidheal identities (and claims on those identities), in particular, the socio-cultural importance of place-based practices and understandings. Recent proposals for a Gàidheal ethnolinguistic assembly may enable modes of articulation and recognition to develop which better capture those realities, as well as supporting societal and linguistic regeneration among the indigenous group

CAFixD: A Case-based Reasoning Method for Fixture Design

Fixtures accurately locate and secure a part during machining operations such that the part can be manufactured to design specifications. To reduce the design costs associated with fixturing, various computer-aided fixture design (CAFD) methods have been developed through the years to assist the fixture designer. Much research has been directed towards developing systems that determine an optimal fixture plan layout, but there is still a need to develop a CAFD method that can continue to assist designers at the unit level where the key task is identifying the appropriate structure that the individual units comprising a fixture should take. This research work details the development of a CAFD methodology (called CAFixD) that seeks to fill this hole in the CAFD field. The approach taken is to consider all operational requirements of a fixture problem, and use them to guide the design of a fixture at the unit level. Based upon a case-based reasoning (CBR) methodology where relevant design experience is retrieved and adapted to provide a new fixture design solution, the CAFixD methodology adopts a rigorous approach to indexing design cases in which axiomatic design functional requirement decomposition is adopted. Thus, the design requirement is decomposed in terms of functional requirements, physical solutions are retrieved and adapted for each individual requirement, and the design re-constituted to form a complete fixture design. Case adaptation knowledge is used to guide the retrieval process. Possible adaptation strategies for modifying candidate cases are identified and then evaluated. Case and adaptation strategy combinations that result in adapted designs that best satisfy the preferences of the designer are used as the final design solutions. Possible means of refining the effectiveness of the method include combining adaptation strategies and considering the order in which design decisions are taken