Willie James Jennings contends that the goal of whiteness is the creation and preservation of segregated space. For Jennings, whiteness, as well as upholding perceived notions of white normativity, is a way of being in the world, an imagined reality made real by our movement in physical space which destroys the identity-forming connections between communities and land. In this article I bring together Pope Francis’s reflections on the globalised economy in Laudato Si’ with the critiques of James H. Cone (...) and Jennings to demonstrate the horrific harm of whiteness on marginalised people groups and the land itself. To resist the building project of whiteness, therefore, requires attention to our relationship with land. At this point I turn more readily to the land of England, offering the beginnings of a theology of place given the substantial land holdings of the Church of England. I close by asking whether the Church of England can be trusted to use its land to dismantle whiteness given its troubling colonial history in relation to land use. (shrink)

Africa, before European colonization, knew no other form of legal system outside customary arrangements. Based on secondary sources and a primary survey conducted between 2009 and 2010 on the situation of women and land rights in anglophone Cameroon, this paper examines the grounds for discrimination in customary laws against women's rights to land in the context of legal pluralism, and discusses the implications of this custom of gender discrimination. In drawing from Cameroon as an exemplar, it concludes that (...) the strong influence and impact of customs on current land tenure systems have global implications on women's land rights, food security and sustainable development, and that gender equality in land matters can be possible only where the critical role of ethics is recognized in pursuit of the economic motive of land rights. (shrink)

On 29 March 2017, the United Kingdom Government notified the European Council of its intention to withdraw from the European Union legal order. On 31 January 2020, the UK entered a transition period, during which it remains bound to the EU Treaty Framework. This review essay examines the near three-year period of the UK’s attempted cessation from the EU. It argues that what is most striking about the Brexit case is that it reveals the extent to which EU member states (...) remain bound by ideologies and tropes developed during the era of European colonisation—even in their relationship with each other. The review essay draws upon Brenna Bhandar’s Colonial lives of property: Law, Land and racial regimes of ownership, Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson’s Rule Britannia: Brexit and the end of empire, and Eva Mackey’s Unsettled expectations: Uncertainty, land and settler decolonization to show how Brexit bears upon themes that have long preoccupied postcolonial scholars working in a variety of contexts and geographical locations. From the Brexit example, the review article highlights the persistence of colonial projects of invention and the appropriative techniques and tropes that attend these and, above all, it highlights the necessity of decolonial violence. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to describe some of John Stuart Mill’s views about property rights in land and some implications he drew for public policy. While Mill defends private ownership of land, he emphasizes the ways in which ownership of land is an anomaly that does not fit neatly into the usual views about private ownership. While most of MiII’s discussion assumes the importance of maximizing the productivity of land, he anticipates (...) contemporary environmentalists by also expressing concerns about excessive exploitation of land for productive use. I extrapolate from these remarks to suggest changes that Mill might have favored regarding ownership rights ina world in which people aimed to decrease productivity. And, I suggest, it is a virtue of utilitarianism that it so readily supports changes in important principles when circumstances change significantly. (shrink)

People sometimes disagree about who owns which objects, and these ownership dilemmas can lead to costly disputes. We investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying people's judgments about finder versus landowner cases, in which a person finds an object on someone else's land. We test psychological hypotheses motivated directly by three major principles that govern these cases in the law. The results show that people are more likely to favor the finder when the object is in a public space compared (...) to a private space. We find mixed support for the hypothesis that people are less likely to favor a finder who is employed by the landowner. Last, we find no support for the hypothesis that people are more likely to favor finders for objects located above ground compared to below ground. We discuss implications for psychological theories of ownership and potential applications to property law. (shrink)

Much controversy has existed over the claims of Native Americans and other indigenous peoples that they have a right—based on original occupancy of land, historical transfers of sovereignty, and principles of self-determination—to a political status separate from the states in which they now find themselves embedded. How valid are these claims on moral grounds? -/- Burke Hendrix tackles these thorny questions in this book. Rather than focusing on the legal and constitutional status of indigenous nations within the states now (...) ruling them, he starts at a more basic level, interrogating fundamental justifications for political authority itself. He shows that historical claims of land ownership and prior sovereignty cannot provide a sufficient basis for challenging the authority of existing states, but that our natural moral duties to aid other persons in danger can justify rights to political separation from states that fail to protect their citizens as they should. -/- Actual attempts at political separation must be carefully managed through well-defined procedural mechanisms, however, to foster extensive democratic deliberation about the nature of the political changes at stake. Using such procedures, Hendrix argues, indigenous peoples should be able to withdraw politically from the states currently ruling them, even to the point of choosing full independence. (shrink)

Hetmans’ donations to the Orthodox Church were characteristic of the religious and political culture of the Cossack state already in the era of its emergence in the mid-17th century. In addition to other gifts, hetmans confirmed or provided Orthodox monasteries with land ownership, which was at the center of identity, power, and social prestige. It is clear that certain concrete motives, expectations, and models of behavior stood behind the hetmans’ donations of land. This article suggests considering hetmans’ (...) donations of land to the Orthodox Church as an element of symbolic communication, in which the giver and the recipient interacted, built symbolic communicative ties, and produced centers of communication. The focus is on “communication through donations,” that is, relationships of giving. Religious motivations and the recognition of monasteries as powerful centers of prayer were determinative for the hetmans’ “communication through donations” to the monasteries. The hetmans’ giving land and other real estate to monasteries was based on “piety,” but it was done in the name of Christ-loving rulers. So, in such donations it is quite natural that state interests were prevalent, but also there were complex combinations of religious, social, and political motivations and expectations. These characteristics were evident both in a general sense and in each specific instance of gifting. (shrink)

This article critically examines the origins and evolution of China’s unique land institutions and situates land policy in the larger context of China’s reforms and pursuit of economic growth. It argues that the Chinese Communist Party has strengthened the institutions that permit land expropriation—namely, urban/rural dualism, decentralized land ownership, and hierarchical land management—in order to use land as a key instrument of macroeconomic regulation, helping the CCP respond to domestic and international economic trends (...) and manage expansion and contraction. Key episodes of macroeconomic policymaking are analyzed, with the use of local and central documents, to show how the CCP relied on the manipulation and distribution of the national land supply either to stimulate economic growth or to rein in an overheating economy. China’s land institutions, therefore, share “complementarities” with fiscal and financial institutions and benefit powerful political actors while imposing costs on marginal ones. (shrink)

As concerns heighten over links between biomass production and land grabs in the global south, attention is turning to understanding the role of governance of biofuels systems, whereby decision-making and conduct are not solely determined through government regulations but increasingly shaped by non-state actors, including multi-stakeholder initiatives. Launched in 2005, Bonsucro is the principal MSI that focuses on sustainability standards for sugar and sugarcane ethanol production. Bonsucro claims that because it is free from government interference and draws on scientific (...) metrics, their standards transcend localized, political–economic contexts. In this paper, we illustrate how the local context shapes the prospects for Bonsucro sustainably certified biofuel production in relation to land and water grabs. To accomplish this, our case focuses on Colombia, which has used a range of national policy mandates to establish itself as one of the larger producers of agrofuels in Latin America. We draw on interviews with stakeholders in the sugar and ethanol industries, paired with an examination of Bonsucro principles on land rights and water use, to illustrate how the sugar industry is framing their participation in Bonsucro, and the effects of the increasing intensification of sugarcane for ethanol production on land and water access for communities. We find that within the context of Colombia, efforts such as Bonsucro provide a veil of legitimacy and authority to a system that is premised on deeply entrenched historical patterns of inequitable land ownership patterns and access to natural resources. (shrink)

Historians of the Khanate of Khiva have long disagreed about the legal and fiscal status of certain categories of land ownership known as atā’ī mulk and yārlīqlī mulk. In the present article, I try to offer a new reading of these categories. In so doing, I challenge the influential arguments of Russian scholars such as O. Škapskij, V. Giršfel’d, A. Galkin, whose conceptualisations of yārlīqlī mulk reflect a number of interpretative errors and confusions between various different legal and (...) fiscal practices. By analysing in detail the edicts of khans’ yārlīqs and tax registries, I attempt to demonstrate that the lands identified by Russian authors as yārlīqlī mulk enjoyed complete fiscal immunity, and that they were commonly referred to in vernacular usage as mulk-i hālis. (shrink)

Land registration systems are used throughout the world in order to store information on the ownership of land, rights attached to it, and burdens affecting it. A smoothly functioning land registration system guarantees the security of land transfer operations. However, there are significant differences in the way national land registration systems are run due to their historical development and divergent legislative approaches to land registration. Consequently, the need arises to compare different systems so (...) as to find both common ground and discrepancies between them. The paper contains such a comparative analysis which has been carried out with translation in mind: to discover the best ways of transferring land registration legal concepts expressed in one linguistic framework and characteristic of a given legal culture into target legal spaces using other linguistic frameworks. The comparison in question has taken place in a third space, a space where selected aspects of selected legal systems mingle revealing more or less clear similarities and more or less distinct differences between them. The juxtaposition of source and target legal cultures in a third space has resulted in finding translation equivalents that do not abuse the original ideas or—if this has been unavoidable—abuse them to the smallest extent possible. The analysis has covered the Polish land registration system and equivalent systems in English- and German-speaking countries and has been conducted from the point of view of a Polish-English and Polish-German translator. (shrink)

The institution of private property lies at the heart of contemporary Western societies. However, what are the limits of property ownership? Do principles of justice require some measure of governmental redistribution of property in order to relieve poverty or to promote greater equality among citizens? And what do principles of justice have to say about individuals' ownership of their own talents and the products of their labor, and about the initial acquisition of land and natural resources? The (...) essays in this volume, written by eleven prominent political and moral philosophers, address these questions and explore related issues. A number of them consider the theoretical foundations of property ownership, asking how the rights of individuals to acquire property can be justified, and how extensive these rights are. Some focus on the concept of self-ownership, discussing how the individual's right to control their own mind, body and actions relates to their right to gain control over extrapersonal objects and resources. Others look at connections between property ownership and various values, including democratic political participation and equality of wealth and opportunity. (shrink)

Ownership is an important identity marker. It provides people with a sense of autonomy, rootedness and opportunity. This essay examines the oral submissions of civil organisations to the Joint Constitutional Review Committee about the issue of land expropriation without compensation. The discussion pays specific attention to the philosophical understandings of land and identity that emerged during the hearings. Three dominant trajectories came into play, namely land as commodity, land as social space and land as (...) spiritual inheritance. Some submissions espoused more than one view, which indicates that the boundaries between the identified paradigms are permeable. However, even those presentations tended to prioritise one approach above the others. Besides identifying the main approaches to land and identity, this essay also provides an immanent critique of their moral assumptions. In contrast to a transcendental approach, an immanent critique asks questions from 'within' and evaluates paradigms in terms of their plausibility, universal applicability, ethical consistency and moral integrity. (shrink)

Many indigenous communities were dispossessed of their land during the period of colonial rule. This long process resulted in forced demographic removals and perennial poverty. Nowadays these communities, especially Third World groups, seek redress of this situation through legal processes of land restitution. This process is met by resistance from landowners in these countries, the colonial powers of old, as well as from big corporations that benefited from the dispossession. The investigation undertaken in this article addresses the ethics (...) of land reform from a Christian ethical perspective. The policy of land restitution in South Africa is used as a case study, but the results of this research are also applicable to other parts of the world where land restitution is considered. The article first evaluates the biblical teachings of land and land reform and their implications for modern ethics. In the light of these issues, the article addresses the question of whether land ownership can be considered as a fundamental human right. The article also focuses on the legality of expropriation and dispossession of land for the purposes of restitution. Moreover, guidelines for fair and legal restitution within the context of Christian ethics and legal philosophical principles are proposed. (shrink)

This chapter seeks to contribute to the eco-feminist dialogue concerning the still present need for global advances in the status of both women and nature. Beginning with a cross-cultural comparative analysis of ancient myth, I propose to revive a dynamic “biophilic” ethics of interconnectedness and eco-justice. An examination of modern relationships between women and land leads us to conclude that our institutions and practices are woefully destructive. This situation is symptomatic of the fundamental oppression inherent to the dominant patriarchal (...) paradigm. Practices imbedded and deeply rooted within societal customs, traditions and attitudes frequently prevent women from equal access to land and deny women the right of being recognized as producers. By reclaiming our ancient goddess myths and indigenous sense of sacredness, we can heal some of the schisms of planetary oppression. Respecting women’s rights to land and their relationships with the earth, and encouraging women’s ownership of land, is a pragmatic, double-pronged step towards changing destructive thinking patterns about women and our planet. Women’s access and title tenure to land is a solution towards empowering women, adjusting ideologies and promoting global and ecological sustainability. (shrink)

According to literature,insecure land tenure biases against soilconservation on farmland. However, there islittle evidence to test whether farmers need toown their land to conserve it, or if long-termleases are adequate. One way to infer whetheror not different land tenure arrangementspromote long-term management is throughanalyzing the types of crops planted on fieldswith different land tenure arrangements.Perennials, forage legumes, grasslands, andgrain are all important parts of sustainablecrop rotation in southwest British Columbia butprovide little cash return in the year (...) they areplanted. Annual crops provide a high cashreturn but create soil conservation problems ifthey are planted too often. A comparison offields with different land tenures showed thatfarmers who own their land plant moreperennials, grain, and forage legumes thanfarmers who rent fields. Few differences wereobserved on fields with different leaselengths. This study leads to three overallconclusions. First, although results confirmthe literature, and insecure land tenure is areal obstacle to long-term soil conservation,it is not possible to assume that long-termleases will substitute for land ownership.Second, it is possible to use relativelyeasy-to-gather data on crop history to assessthe impact of tenure on farming. Third,intervening variables, in this case a programthat pays farmers to plant grasslands,over-rides the effect of insecure land tenureand creates incentives for owner-operators andtenant farmers alike to use crop managementthat protects soil fertility in the longterm. (shrink)

Land tenure relations have both social and environmental implications, ranging from potential power issues to land stewardship. Drawing upon survey data of landowners collected in the Great Lakes Basin of the U.S., this study builds upon existing research by examining absentee landlords of agricultural land—a vastly understudied but growing category of landowners. By furthering analysis on gender dynamics in the landlord-tenant relationship, the study findings augment Gilbert and Beckley’s (Rural Sociology, 1993) suggestion that subordinate landlord-dominant tenant relationships (...) may be a pattern and contribute to understanding the nuances that co-ownership potentially plays in these relationships. (shrink)

This paper distinguished different analytical approaches to the evaluation of the sustainability of large-scale land acquisitions—at both the conceptual and methodological levels. First, at the conceptual level, evaluation of the sustainability of land acquisitions depends on what definition of sustainability is adopted—strong or weak sustainability. Second, a lack of comparative empirical methods in many studies has limited the identification of causal factors affecting sustainability. An empirical investigation into the sustainability of land acquisitions in Tanzania that employs these (...) existing concepts in a methodologically rigorous manner offers an opportunity to more clearly addresses ethical questions surrounding international land acquisitions. My findings indicate that it should not be assumed that sustainability necessarily hinges on issues of strong sustainability, particularly that all village lands represent critical natural capital. As a result of its unique history of Ujamaa villagization, Tanzania villages often have ownership of significant tracts of unused land that mitigates the risk of violating conditions of strong sustainability. Issues of weak sustainability appear to be more important to villagers—particularly the degree of man-made capital benefits derived from projects. While compensation rates for lands acquired were low and the process lacked transparency, low compensation rates are not sufficient grounds for rejecting land acquisitions as unsustainable. When projects deliver significant man-made capital benefits, low compensation rates were not a politically salient issue amongst villagers. Finally, results suggest that some prioritization of man-made capital over biodiversity can be ethically defensible when the decision-making process goes through legitimate village government bodies and benefits reach poor villagers. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of U.S. farmland owners, operators, and workers by race, ethnicity, and gender. We first review the intersection between racialized and gendered capitalism and farmland ownership and farming in the United States. Then we analyze data from the 2014 Tenure and Ownership Agricultural Land survey, the 2012 Census of Agriculture, and the 2013–2014 National Agricultural Worker Survey to demonstrate that significant nation-wide disparities in farming by race, ethnicity and gender persist in the U.S. (...) In 2012–2014, White people owned 98% and operated 94% of all farmland. They generated 98% of all farm-related income from land ownership and 97% of income from farm owner-operatorship. Meanwhile, People of Color farmers were more likely to be tenants rather than owners, owned less land, and generated less farm-related wealth per person than their White counterparts. Hispanic farmers were also disproportionately farm laborers. In addition to racial and ethnic disparities, there were disparities by gender. About 63% of non-operating landowners, 86% of farm operators, and 87% of tenant farmers were male, and female farmers tended to generate less income per farmer than men. This data provides evidence of ongoing racial, ethnic and gender disparities in agriculture in the United States. We conclude with a call to address the structural drivers of the disparities and with recommendations for better data collection. (shrink)

This essay attempts to clarify the distinction between property and sovereignty, and to bring out the importance of that distinction to a liberal nationalism. Beginning with common intuitions about what distinguishes our rights to our possessions from the state's rightful governance over us, it proceeds to explore some historical sources of these intuitions, and the importance of a sharp distinction between ownership and governance to the rise of liberalism. From here, the essay moves into an exploration of group (...) class='Hi'>ownership, and the ways in which group ownership can in practice turn into an illiberal kind of sovereignty The point is to shed new light on problems that nationalist states — states purporting to represent or foster a particular group identity — characteristically face. Examples of these problems, from the Israel/Palestine conflict, are put forth in the conclusion. (shrink)

I explore two thought-experiments in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s important article, “A Defense of Abortion”: the violinist example and the people-seeds example. I argue (contra Thomson) that you have a moral duty not to unplug yourself from the violinist and also a moral duty not to destroy a people-seed that has landed in your sofa. Nevertheless, I also argue that there are crucial differences between the thought-experiments and the contexts of pregnancy due to rape or to contraceptive failure. In virtue of (...) these differences, it would not follow from my conclusions about the violinist and people-seeds cases that abortion would not be permissible in a case of rape or in a case of voluntary intercourse with contraceptive failure. (shrink)

A number of philosophers argue that the earth's resources belong to everyone equally. Suppose this is true. Does this entail that people have a right to migrate across borders? This article considers two models of egalitarian ownership and assesses their implications for immigration policy. The first is Equal Division, under which each person is granted an equal share of the value of the earth's natural resources. The second is Common Ownership, under which every person has the right to (...) use the earth's natural resources, but not the right to exclude others from them. While these models and their associated ideas have a long history within Western political thought, this article will examine them as they are presented by two sets of contemporary philosophers: Hillel Steiner, who defends Equal Division, and Michael Blake and Mathias Risse, who defend Common Ownership. In the case of each model, the article does three things. First, it considers the implications of the model for immigration policy. Second, it defends the model against objections from those defending immigration restrictions. Third, it contends that the model does not go far enough in its opposition to immigration restrictions. More specifically, the article argues that both Equal Division and Common Ownership, as presented by their proponents, fail to respect the claims of people whose interest in the land is not primarily economic. If the earth belongs to everyone equally, then people should not be prevented from pursuing important migratory goals such as family reunification, career development and education. The article concludes with a proposal for combining Equal Division with Common Ownership. Under this combined model, people would be free to migrate across international borders. (shrink)

A number of philosophers argue that the earth's resources belong to everyone equally. Suppose this is true. Does this entail that people have a right to migrate across borders? This article considers two models of egalitarian ownership and assesses their implications for immigration policy. The first is Equal Division, under which each person is granted an equal share of the value of the earth's natural resources. The second is Common Ownership, under which every person has the right to (...) use the earth's natural resources, but not the right to exclude others from them. While these models and their associated ideas have a long history within Western political thought, this article will examine them as they are presented by two sets of contemporary philosophers: Hillel Steiner, who defends Equal Division, and Michael Blake and Mathias Risse, who defend Common Ownership. In the case of each model, the article does three things. First, it considers the implications of the model for immigration policy. Second, it defends the model against objections from those defending immigration restrictions. Third, it contends that the model does not go far enough in its opposition to immigration restrictions. More specifically, the article argues that both Equal Division and Common Ownership, as presented by their proponents, fail to respect the claims of people whose interest in the land is not primarily economic. If the earth belongs to everyone equally, then people should not be prevented from pursuing important migratory goals such as family reunification, career development and education. The article concludes with a proposal for combining Equal Division with Common Ownership. Under this combined model, people would be free to migrate across international borders. (shrink)

While claims for the return of expropriated land by Native Americans and other indigenous peoples are often evaluated using legal frameworks, such approaches fail to engage the fundamental moral questions involved. This essay outlines three justifications for Native Americans to pursue land claims: to regain properties where original ownership has not been superseded, to aid the long-term survival of their endangered cultures, and to challenge and revise the historical misremembering of mainstream American society. The third justification is (...) most controversial. It asserts that understandings of history shape perceptions of the present, and that intensively pursued land claims can provide powerful challenges to inaccurate conceptions of the past. This essay argues that Native Americans are for this reason justified in strategically pursuing land claims that are difficult to justify on other grounds, and closes with some worries about the legitimate role of strategy in political action. (shrink)

The right of Australian Indigenous groups to own traditional lands has been a contentious issue in the recent history of Australia. Indeed, Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders did not consider themselves as full citizens in the country they had inhabited for millennia until the late 1960s, and then only after a long campaign and a national referendum (1967) in favour of changes to the Australian Constitution to remove restrictions on the services available to Indigenous Australians. The concept of terra nullius, (...) misapplied to Australia, was strong in the popular imagination among the descendants of settlers or recent migrants and was not definitively put to rest until the Mabo decision (1992), which also established a firm precedent for the recognition of native title.This path to equality was fraught and made lengthy by the fact that the worldviews of the Indigenous Australians (i.e. Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders) and the European (mainly British and Irish) settlers were so different, at least at a superficial level, this being the level at which prejudice is typically manifested. One area where this fact is particularly evident is in the area of the conceptualisation of property and especially the notion of land “ownership” and “use”.In this paper, we will focus on these terms, examining the linguistic evidence of some of the Australian languages spoken traditionally by Indigenous Australians as one means (the only one in many cases) of gaining an insight into their worldview, comparing it with that underlying the English language.We will show that the conceptualisations manifested in the two languages are contrasting but not irreconcilable, and indeed the ability of both groups of speakers (or their descendants in the case of many endangered Australian languages) to reach agreement and come to develop an understanding of the other’s perspective is reason for celebration for all Australians. (shrink)

This study seeks to investigate the nature of ownership of land, and how the right to its control and use can be inferred from self-ownership as a premise. Hence, the question asked is how ownership can be justified considering the nature of man from a natural rights point of view. The starting point for the argument is self-ownership as being, where man is identified as an indivisible entirety with inalienable rights to his self emanating from (...) his complex nature. This identification is the point of departure in examining the relation between man and the world, and the concept of ownership. Man’s right to self implies the right to use externals through choice, to “focus his consciousness” in order to achieve values beneficial to his being. The discussion on ownership, as inferred from self-ownership as being, ends in a discussion of the distinct features of land, and how ownership of such can be obtained. The conclusion is that man as a rights-bearer to self can obtain natural use-rights through possession and constructive use of resources, rights which are valid throughout the value-achieving process. (shrink)

The story of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21:1-16) is one played out during the dynasty of Omri in Northern Israel (866-842 BCE) and speaks to an era in which socio-economics were largely dominated by political elites. The narrative concerns inter alia a clash between two arrangements of land ownership, inheritance and possession by others. Thus, from a socio – analytical perspective, the story has lessons to impart to 2022 South Africa where the issue of the land redistribution (...) is an important one given that even after a quarter of a century post-apartheid, millions of people continue to have no real access to land. Many people are thus left precariously exposed and vulnerable. The story imparts the truth that a leader of a state is bound to respect the proprietary rights of his citizens. In any event, viewed from a theological perspective, all the resources of creation are to be utilised to serve the common good and we are all custodians of creation. This includes people who have no private property of their own and who are for the most part excluded and side-lined by those in positions of power. The story of Naboth’s vineyard is thus a simple one where a sovereign sees something he wants, and then formulates a strategy to get it. In Naboth’s story, the king had him killed. This is a very constructive rendition of what happens when there’s no justice and the dominant powers get to terminate those who stand in their way. Justice tends to break down when people lose perspective of who they are concerning God who ultimately forgives us when we atone. (shrink)

The creation of humanity (Gn 1:26–2:25) marks the climatic point of the creation process because after it, God is said to have rested. A clear marker that humans are the epitome of creation is the fact that they were created in God’s image (Gn 1:26). Unlike animals, humans have the capacity to think, act with free will, exert self-control and also have a conscience. These distinctive characteristics earn humanity not only dominion over creation (Gn 1:28), but also the care towards (...) the created order. The fact of having been created in God’s image, imago Dei, or to be godlike, is therefore associated with certain rights and responsibilities over creation. Further, being created in God’s image implies that human life itself is sacred and thus should not be terminated in any way, either by the individual themself or by any other person(s) (Gn 9:6). Given that human life is so sacred, such a rationale is invoked in the absolute prohibition on murder. Above all, being created in God’s image connotes gender equality – ‘male and female he created them’ (Gn 1:27b). In view of the land reform exercise in Zimbabwe, so much has happened, but the big question which remains is whether women have received a fair share in the land redistribution exercise. Making a womanist contextual reading of Genesis 1:26, this article seeks to reflect on the Zimbabwean land reform exercise, challenging the lack of gender inclusion in the redistribution exercise. Contribution: Given that women theology is that of liberation, empowerment and affirmation, this research makes a unique contribution to women theologies as it pushes for women’s empowerment through fair land redistribution. By tapping into the implications of having been created in God’s image, the research has successfully argued that the current situation, whereby gender gaps in land ownership are still quite large, needs to be addressed as stewardship over creation was given to both men and women. (shrink)

Finland is currently undergoing a fundamental structural transformation in the forestry sector, with factories closing in the Global North and production being shifted to the Global South (see also Carrere & Lohmann 1996; Cossalter & Pye-Smith 2003). This is accompanied by Finnish mass movements protesting unemployment and demanding corporate social responsibility (CSR) from theforest industry. The difficult domestic situation, however, seems to overshadow the circumstances of the new production regions in the South. What do we actually know about the impacts (...) of the Finnish forestry sector in those societies? The branches of global forest companies may be located in regions that are experiencing various societal conflicts – like in the case of indigenous communities in northeastern Brazil, where the question of land ownership remains unsolved. The aim of our paper is to bring out the perspective of these traditional communities and the legitimacy problems of the Finnish forest industry in Brazil. We also scrutinize the corporate tactics by which companies seek to gain societal acceptability in the region. These range from social programs and campaigns to violent confrontations, even to attempts to deconstruct the identities of indigenous communities. Our general argument is that while companies have outlined their CSR policies in theory, the situation in actual practice is quite different. Companies often fail to take into account the prevailing socioeconomic conditions in the region and some of the more marginal stakeholders like indigenous peoples, who obviously have no economic importance to the company. (shrink)

The stakes are very high in many struggles over cultural property, not only because the property is itself valuable, but also because property rights of many kinds hinge on cultural identity. However, the language of property rights and possession, and the standards for establishing cultural rights, is founded in antiquated and essentialized concepts of cultural continuity and cultural purity. As cultural property and culturally-defined rights become increasingly valuable in the global marketplace, disputes over ownership and management are becoming more (...) and more intense. Using the example of a recent lawsuit over logging on Mayan Indian reservations in the Central American country of Belize, this paper argues that cultural essentialist positions are no longer tenable. Assigning exclusive ownership of globally important resources to any group or entity on purely cultural grounds is likely to prolong conflict instead of creating workable management structures. The author instead advocates a concept of “stakeholding” which acknowledges the legitimate interests of diverse individuals and groups. (shrink)

It is the contention of this paper that some progress in alleviating the social and environmental problems which are beginning to face Papua New Guinea can be achieved by supporting traditional Melanesian values through maintaining the customary system of communal land tenure. In accordance with this aim, I will proceed to contrast certain Western attitudes towards individual freedom, selfinterested behaviour, individual and communal interests and private ownership with attitudes and values expressed in the traditional Melanesian approach. In order (...) to demonstrate the latter, I will briefly touch upon the phenomenon of wantokism and indicate how the Melanesian values associated with this concept find their locus in the system of customary communal ownership. Subsequently, I will describe how the emergence of a cash economy and the attachment to Western gadgetry and products have effected injury to the environment and undermined values which have previously maintained Melanesian social cohesion. While admitting that little can be done to eradicate the desire for cash and the products it can buy, I suggest that Melanesian communities and the environment itself would receive more protection if future development in Papua New Guinea embraced a system which incorporated certain of the traditional Melanesian values through the preservation of the communal form of land tenure. Ultimately, I suggest a way in which customary communal land tenure can be integrated into the established Anglo-Australian legal system. (shrink)

This article sets out a new conception of ‘property as an asset of resilience’. Building on Fineman’s emphasis on ‘webs’ of resilience, and applying insights from Actor-Network Theory and Resilient Property Theory, we examine how the rhetorical claims asserted by owners and non-owners, individually and collectively, and the ways that law recognizes and endorses those claims, affect the production of property-as-resilience. Applying Fineman’s framework, we argue that the ‘embodiment’ and ‘embeddedness’ of human vulnerability is revealed by the necessary and inevitable (...) relationship we have with land, housing and place. Everyone—including homeless people—must ‘be’ somewhere (embodiment); however, it is our ability to access ‘assets of resilience’ through our social embeddedness in institutional structures and relationships that mitigates (or not) our experience and life opportunities. In this article we analyze the nature of real property as an asset of resilience, the consequences of exclusionary concepts of ownership for how resilience is allocated, and the implications for how we think and talk about ‘exclusion’ and ‘inclusion’ in property theories and property law. We consider the roles that states perform in the allocation of property as an asset of resilience: both directly, through the protection and enforcement of private property rights and official narratives about the nature of private property; and indirectly, as owners leverage the hinterland of privilege extended to ‘ownership’ and owners to deepen their own networks of resilience. (shrink)

John Kinsella is an important literary witness to the acknowledgement of native title in Australia, and Indigenous rights more generally. His writings also bear witness to continuing forces of resistance to those rights in Australian society. This paper traces Kinsella’s engagement with the Mabo case, the 1992 legal decision that recognised native title as part of Australian law, and rejected the fiction that Australia was terra nullius at the time of British colonisation. Focusing on “Graphology: Canto 5” and other texts, (...) it argues that Kinsella presents a sustained reflection on the implications and the limits of this decision, in law and in wider cultural understandings and practices, through poetic allusions, paratexts and personal commentary. His writing since the mid-1990s reveals an acute awareness of how imported concepts of property and law are concealed within Western poetic traditions such as pastoral. To counter the effects of this ideology, Kinsella interpolates and appropriates terms from the discourse of property law, juxtaposing them against other ways of understanding and living in the land. In several collections, but especially in Jam Tree Gully, he seeks to develop an ethically reflective account of ownership of land taken from others, critiquing the dominant idea of property and articulating an alternative way of living in the land based on co-existence. The rights of the dispossessed traditional owners are central to a new mode of “writing the land.”. (shrink)

This article applies Karl Polanyi’s concept of a double movement to the trajectory of rural state policies in China since 1949. It argues that Chinese socialism created a contradictory social contract that has fueled an ongoing struggle between state and peasantry over the surplus generated from rural land. This struggle has shaped a historical oscillation between state policies that facilitate extraction of agricultural surpluses and policies that introduce social protections in the form of household farming and revitalized collective (...) class='Hi'>ownership. Based on secondary sources, this article compares the arc of rural policies during the Mao era and in the transition to and during the current state capitalist period. Then, based on original interview-based and ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in rural Sichuan Province, it analyzes the current introduction of urban and agrarian capital into the rural economy, revealing dynamics of a current countermovement from state-led extraction to compromise. (shrink)

The positions on private landownership of two libertarian scholars thought to have a wide following in that movement are examined The libertarians —Murray Rothbard and Robert Nozick—hold positions which are untenable. Rothbard's theory is almost indistinguishable from John Locke's and rests on the labor theory of ownership and the admixture theory of labor; standards which are too vague. Nozick believes that making something valuable gives a right of ownership, but again the standard is too ambiguous. And it is (...) necessary to appropriate a thing before one can improve it. The value added theory permits a utilitarian justification of landownership involving the payment of compensation to non-owners. (shrink)

This latest volume in the Oxford Readings in Feminism series presents the results of the multi-disciplinary feminist exploration of the distinction between public and private. Contributors demonstrate the significance of the distinction in feminist theory, its articulation in the modern and late modern public sphere, and its impact on identity politics within feminism in recent years. Feminism, the Public and the Private offers an essential perspective on feminist theory for students and teachers of women's and gender studies, cultural studies, history, (...) political theory, geography and sociology. (shrink)

A dizzying trip through the mind(s) of the provocative and influential thinker Nick Land. During the 1990s British philosopher Nick Land's unique work, variously described as “rabid nihilism,” “mad black deleuzianism,” and “cybergothic,” developed perhaps the only rigorous and culturally-engaged escape route out of the malaise of “continental philosophy” —a route that was implacably blocked by the academy. However, Land's work has continued to exert an influence, both through the British “speculative realist” philosophers who studied with him, (...) and through the many cultural producers—writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers—who have been invigorated by his uncompromising and abrasive philosophical vision. Beginning with Land's early radical rereadings of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kant and Bataille, the volume collects together the papers, talks and articles of the mid-90s—long the subject of rumour and vague legend (including some work which has never previously appeared in print)—in which Land developed his futuristic theory-fiction of cybercapitalism gone amok; and ends with his enigmatic later writings in which Ballardian fictions, poetics, cryptography, anthropology, grammatology and the occult are smeared into unrecognisable hybrids. Fanged Noumena gives a dizzying perspective on the entire trajectory of this provocative and influential thinker's work, and has introduced his unique voice to a new generation of readers. (shrink)

Multi-stakeholder initiatives for biodiversity conservation on working landscapes often necessitate strategies to facilitate learning in order to foster successful collaboration. To investigate the learning processes that both undergird and result from collaborative efforts, this case study employs the concept of boundary work as a lens to examine learning between rice growers and conservation professionals in California’s Central Valley, who were engaged in a collaborative research project focused on migratory bird conservation. Through analysis of workshop observations, project documents, and interviews with (...) rice growers and conservation professionals, we identified five distinct factors of the collaborative research process that influenced learning amongst these two groups: having mutually beneficial goals, sharing ownership of the collaborative research process, building trust, integrating knowledge, and institutional alignment. We also examined and identified learning outcomes for both rice growers and conservation professionals, which included new knowledge of the social-ecological system, new practices around farming and collaboration, and shifting identities. Our findings suggest that applying these factors and outcomes for learning when structuring collaborative research, and other multi-stakeholder initiatives, can foster learning amongst diverse stakeholder groups to support new approaches for balancing resource use and adaptive management. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the problem of ranking available drugs in guideline development to support clinicians in their work. Based on a pragmatic approach to the notion of evidence and a hierarchical view on different kinds of evidence this chapter introduces a decision aid, HiDAD, which draws on the multi criteria decision making literature. This decision aid implements the wide-spread intuition that there are different kinds of evidence with varying degrees of importance by relying on a strict ordinal ordering of kinds (...) of evidence. In order to construct a ranking every pair of drugs is first compared separately on all kinds of evidence. Next, these quantitative comparisons are then aggregated into an overall comparison between drugs based on all the available evidence in a way which avoids that evidence of less importance is trumped by evidence of the higher levels. Finally, these overall comparisons are used to determine the final ranking of drugs which then informs the process of guideline writing. Properties, modifications and applicability of the decision aid HiDAD are discussed and assessed. (shrink)

C. I. Lewis’s conception of the given element in perceptual experience was one of the targets of Sellars’ famous charge that many such conceptions fall victim to the Myth of the Given. Yet exactly what makes a conception of the given mythical has remained unclear. Here I aim to clarify this issue by discussing Eric Watkins’ recent claim that a conception exactly like the one Lewis articulated in Mind and the World Order in fact avoids the Myth. Watkins motivates this (...) claim in part by raising objections for John McDowell’s account of the Myth and argues that a better account can be extracted from Kant. I defend McDowell’s position (and reject Watkins’ Kantian account) by arguing that these objections are based on a failure to appreciate an implication of the claim (which Watkins accepts) that rational thought operates in “the logical space of reasons.” Specifically, I focus on the implication that a thinker must be in a position to understand the rational significance of her perceptual experience. Along the way I explain in what ways Watkins’ conception of the given in experience mirrors the view of Lewis. (shrink)