Abstract
AbstractThis chapter examines John Locke’s contributions to the property discourse in the context of the first hallmark of property, individuality. A legal geographical analysis of his Two Treatises is employed to show how Locke’s focus on the individual and the labour theory of value required a reductionist understanding of the commons and communal land use. Locke’s influences from improvement philosophy and his role in the colonial administration of North America are also discussed in relation to his understanding of land. The chapter addresses the consequences of perceiving locally developed concepts of common land as empty space or wasteland. Property’s association with individual liberty in Anglo-American law is reinterpreted in light of its reliance on and extraction from complex Indigenous landscapes.
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
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