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Contributors to this volume take issue with the ‘idealist’ approach in which land and landscape – place and space – are read as purely expressive and ultimately poetic. They argue that too much emphasis on the subjective construction of land obscures the fundamentally meaningful sense in which land is also used and appropriated: while land may have some subjective, ideological meaning, it exists, also, as a practical resource. The essays focus on postcolonial legacies in land law, contemporary disputes and land claims surrounding ancestral lands, conservation issues and road protests. Areas covered include Western and Eastern Europe, West Africa, the Caribbean, Australia and the Pacific, India and Indonesia.
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LAND, LAW AND ENVIRONMENT Mythical Land, Legal Boundaries Edited by ALLEN ABRAMSON AND DIMITRIOS THEODOSSOPOULOS Pluto P Press LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA First published 2000 by PLUTO PRESS 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Allen Abramson and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos 2000 The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7453 1575 5 hbk ISBN 0 7453 1570 4 pbk Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Land, law, and environment : mythical land, legal boundaries / edited by Allen Abramson and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos. p. cm.— (Anthropology, culture, and society) ISBN 0–7453–1575–5 (hardback) 1. Human geography. 2. Landscape assessment. 3. Landscape changes. 4. Land settlement patterns. 5. Land tenure—Law and legislation. I. Abramson, Allen. II. Theodossopoulos, Dimitrios. II. Title. IV. Series. GF50.L33 2000 304.2'3—dc21 00–009107 09 10 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Disclaimer: Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton Printed in the European Union by TJ International, Padstow CONTENTS 1. Mythical Land, Legal Boundaries: Wondering about Landscape and Other Tracts Allen Abramson 1 2. Whose Forest? Whose Myth? Conceptualisations of Community Forests in Cameroon Philip Burnham 31 3. The Land People Work and the Land the Ecologists Want: Indigenous Land Valorisation in a Greek Island Community Threatened by Conservation Law Dimitrios Theodossopoulos 4. Tract: Locke, Heidegger and Scruffy Hippies in Trees Paul Durman 5. Not So Black and White: The Effects of Aboriginal Law on Australian Legislation Veronica Strang 6. The Appropriation of Lands of Law by Lands of Myth in the Caribbean Region Jean Besson 7. Mythic Rites and Land Rights in Northern India Kusum Gopal 59 78 93 116 136 8. Politics, Confusion and Practice: Landownership and De-collectivisation in Ukraine Louise Perrotta 156 9. The Re-appropriation of Sakai Land: The Case of a Shrine in Riau (Indonesia) Nathan Porath 176 10. Bounding the Unbounded: Ancestral Land and Jural Relations in the Interior of Eastern Fiji Allen Abramson 191 Notes on Contributors Index 211 213 v 1 MYTHICAL LAND, LEGAL BOUNDARIES: WONDERING ABOUT LANDSCAPE AND OTHER TRACTS1 Allen Abramson The treaty divided the valley between France and Spain through the centre of the plain ... But the 1660 treaty failed to define the exact territorial location of the Spanish-French boundary. Only the Treati