Abstract
AbstractTo explain property’s origins in place or landscape, this chapter draws on legal, historical, geographical, etymological and archaeological research to reconstruct how people understood land before property. The chapter relies on two main sources: Kenneth Olwig’s cultural geographical research on early landscapes in pre-feudal Scandinavia and Sub-Roman/pre-enclosure Britain illustrates the relationship between land, law and people; and Nicole Graham’s etymological analysis linking property not to ownership but to proximity affirms that a specific location to which someone belonged generated relations relevant to identity, community and a sustainable way of life. Land was communal, dynamic and characterised by attachment, the polar opposite of property’s defining characteristics today (individual, exclusive and alienable).
Publisher
Springer International Publishing