Land, Law and Environment: Mythical Land, Legal Boundaries (Anthropology, Culture and Society) - Hardcover

Abramson, Allen; Theodossopoulus, Dimitrios

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0745315755 ISBN 13: 9780745315751

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2001

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Allen Abramson is a lecturer in Social Anthropology at University College London. He has also taught in the Universities of the South Pacific (Fiji), Glasgow and Edinburgh.Dimitrios Theodossopoulos is a lecturer in the Anthropology Department at University of Wales Lampeter.

Review:

"This book presents a fascinating array of land-related issues from an anthropological perspective. (It) is particularly valuable as an interdisciplinary tool. This is an intriguing glimpse into non-legal factors that affect how and why laws evolve in the land relations area. Legal scholars interested in land title issues and native land rights will find this book immensely instructive. These essays, written by scholars in the social sciences compiled with a wide range of views and geographic areas of interest, and insightful and thought provoking. The book is a marvelously designed reference manual. It contains a detailed topical index, including cross-references, and marvelous bibliographic resources. In addition, extensive references are cited at the end of each essay, allowing interested readers to pursue their particular area of study further. I commend this book to the attention of legal scholars, social scientists, and other readers interested in native land rights. It will provoke readers to consider this topic from perspectives they otherwise might not." -- Journal of Legal Studies, United States Air Force Academy

About this edition

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0745315755
• ISBN 13: 9780745315751
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224