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Property ownership, resource use, and the ‘gift of nature’

  • University of Brighton
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

Through a theoretical and empirical consideration of gift exchange we argue in this paper that those with legal interests in land have constructed property relations around a claim of reciprocity with nature. This has been used to legitimate the ways in which they have deployed their property power to exclude others, thus seeking to retain their dominion over both humans and nonhumans. In so doing, however, people with such interests have failed to understand the dynamic of gift relationships, with their inherent inculcation of subject and other, to the point where the exercise of power becomes contingent on the continued hegemony of property relations. Using the politics of recreational access to inland waters in England and Wales, we show that power—over both humans and nonhumans—is temporary and conditional in ways that are not fully theorised in most contemporary debates about property rights and their deployment on nonhuman subjects.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 451-466

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (Volume 31, Issue 3)

Publication milestones

  • Published - 01/01/2013

Publication status

Published - 01/01/2013

ISSN

0263-7758

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/625166
  • Scopus: 84879160302

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