Royal Scottish Geographical Society April 1948

ABSTRACT

Land use in Scotland's countryside is currently an issue of major public concern, largely because of a sea-change in agricultural policy which seemslikely to lead to the withdrawal of some land from agricultural use. In addition, there has been concern about the scale of upland afforestation, about land availability for housebuilding, and about claims on land for conservation and for rural development. This article provides an overview of these current landuse issues in Scotland.     

“To see things in an objective light”: the Dakota Access Pipeline and the ongoing construction of settler colonial landscapes

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the discourses used by proponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) as claims of universality to which the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and allied activists mounted a movement of opposition in 2014–2017. We position our analysis within the historical context of Lakota and Dakota resistance to settler colonialism, which has endured since the nineteenth century. From publicly available texts circulated by key actors in the conflict over the construction of this pipeline project, we identify themes that proponents of this project drew upon to articulate their representations of the land as universal. We suggest that claims like these, when naturalized in practice, have historically materialized in settler colonial landscapes. With the concept of settler colonial landscapes, we focus on ways of seeing and representing places that have facilitated the dispossession of Indigenous people from their territory as well as the construction of a settler-dominated community. In this way, we develop a cultural geographical understanding of the ongoing construction of settler colonial landscapes as a process dependent on claims to neutrality and objectivity.     

The Double Movement of Immovable Property Rights in Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one of many countries around the world where the relationship between customary land tenure and economic development has been hotly debated for a long time. A commonplace of the debate in PNG is that 97% of the nation's land is held under customary tenure, while only 3% has been alienated, and these proportions have not changed since the country became independent in 1975. This paper shows that the boundary between customary and alienated forms of land or immovable property was already showing signs of instability in the late colonial period, and this instability has been greatly magnified in the post-colonial period. The areas of land subject to some form of partial alienation have increased along with the ways and means by which immovable property has been ‘mobilised’, while a variety of customary claims to previously alienated areas have grown stronger over the same period. Although Karl Polanyi's idea of a ‘double movement’ can throw some light on this phenomenon, the PNG case also reveals a new side to the application of this concept.     

“Soldiers with stiff bodies”: rumors,stereotypes and the Chinese image of the British army during the First Opium War (1839-1842)

ABSTRACT

A curious aspect of the First Opium War was the circulation among Chinese officials of two claims made about British soldiers, instigated by Commissioner Lin Zexu: their uniforms were so tight that if they were to stumble they would not be able to get up again; and, the men were “like fish,” thus able to function well at sea, but not to fight on land because they had become so used to the pitching and rolling of their ships. This article examines the extent to which these notions took on the quality of wartime rumors, and how they spread beyond generals and officials and into the general population. It considers the way in which the rumors functioned in different ways and at different levels of society, taking on different constructions of meaning in multiple social and political domains.     

Recognition of native rights in Northern Quebec: Settlement of comprehensive claims,constitutional protection and economic development

In order to allow for hydro development in Northern Quebec, it was necessary for the federal and provincial governments to negotiate conditions of settlement with the tree and Inuit people. These negotiations resulted in the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement in 1975.

A process to define aboriginal rights was established when the Canadian Constitution was repatriated in 1981–1982. In 1983, the Constitution was amended to recognize, among other things, rights or free ‐doms acquired by way of land claims agreements, as well as existing aboriginal and treaty rights. However, after a series of constitutional meetings, participants did not agree on an amendment to entrench the right to self‐government.

In the context of future development and actual practices, the exercise of rights is also extremely crucial; and, indeed, it is only through practice that those rights can be measured.     

The Evolution and Destruction of Oorlam Communities in the Rustenburg District of South Africa: The Cases of Welgeval and Bethlehem, 1850s–1980

Abstract

This is a study of two Oorlam communities in the Rustenburg district. The one, Welgeval, was predominantly rural, the other Bethlehem, otherwise known as the Oorlam Locasie, in Rustenburg town itself, was mostly urban in character. They were situated no more than 60 kilometres apart. They were both off-springs of Boer, later Afrikaner society, and, to a lesser extent, of attachment to missionaries. They both survived for approximately the same duration, and both were victims, in slightly different ways, of apartheid. There was some known contact between the two communities. The emergence of their respective histories has rested in part on land restitution claims, which like many across South Africa, have brought to light previously forgotten or uncovered remembrances. There are, therefore, significant points of similarity and comparison between them. This article further complements the existing literature of previous scholars on the Oorlam by uncovering the experiences of two more sites of Oorlam occupation. Finally a study of the two communities raises interesting issues regarding their identity and the ways in which they have remembered and reconstructed their pasts.     

Nuutauniq (Moves in Inuit Life): Arctic Transformations and the Politics of Urban Inuit Mobility

ABSTRACT

Today, one in four Inuit live outside of Inuit Nunangat, the Arctic territory incorporating the four northern Inuit land claims regions. With the majority of those Inuit living in cities, the issue of urban Inuit populations is becoming a more prominent focus for policy debate. In this article, I argue that urban Inuit mobility is a historically complex and multilayered phenomenon embedded in, not detached from, the major processes of social transformation affecting Inuit across the Canadian Arctic from the mid-twentieth century on. I use this analysis to explore the diverse formulation of Inuit-specific policy initiatives in Montreal, a task that, I show, is made easier by the Montreal Inuit radio show called Nipivut.     

The Títulos de Ebtún,Yucatan, Mexico: Mapping Maya Communal Identity in a Colonial Spanish Notarial Context

ABSTRACT

The main focus in this article is on four maps from colonial Yucatan, Mexico (c.1542?1821). The maps illustrate a two-volume set of Maya notarial documents called the Títulos de Ebtún and concern disputed communal rights to Tontzimin, one of the sparse water sources (cenotes) of this arid limestone region, and its surrounding arable land. Mention is also made of two maps of the province of Mani that were included in treaties agreed with the Spanish authorities as a final record of Maya claims to traditional agricultural rights. Although all these maps were produced by Spanish officials, they relate to broader colonial mapping traditions in Yucatan and embody a clear Maya influence. At the same time, they reveal the effect of Maya mapping practices on Spanish notarial and mapping traditions at the close of the colonial period.     

Who's indigenous? Whose archaeology?

Abstract

The International Labour Organisation, the United Nations and various indigenous Organisations have raised and/or objected to diverse criteria through which indigenous groups have been defined and the rights that should be accorded to them. This paper discusses the implications of these issues in relation to archaeological research and heritage management and uses this to position the other papers in this volume. Specific themes that are addressed include: the impact of colonialism and nation-forming on indigenous groups; the continuing influence of 19th and early 20th century social evolutionary concepts on the representation of indigenous groups and the role of archival material from this period today; the contrasting processes of cultural continuity and assimilation within ‘dominant’ societies in which indigenous communities have participated, and the effects that this has had on more recent claims over land rights; the cultural differences that surround the concepts of individual and community ownership, particularly in relation to copyright; the role of academia, museums and the media in the representation of indigenous people in the past and the present.     

White skin,black heart? 1 The politics of belonging and Native Title in Australia

This paper explores the ways in which local communities are articulating, negotiating and contesting relationships with place. It does this through a case study of place contestation in the Barmah-Millewa Forest, in south-eastern Australia. A Native Title Claim by the local indigenous community to land and inland waters was heard in the Australian Federal Court while this research was conducted. This has provided an avenue through which to explore the politics of place and identity in contemporary Australia. Recent theoretical discussions of place and identity and their manifestations in Australia are discussed in this paper. Through the case study, the paper demonstrates the complex and problematic ways in which place and identity can be constructed in Native Title Claims, and the intense and unsettling politics of claims to 'belonging' that result. It argues that whilst there is a need to recognize the desire for profound attachments to place of all Australians, we must be mindful of the political ramifications of the particular responses of local communities. The paper concludes that ongoing interdisciplinary and theoretically informed empirical research is necessary to understand the complex context of people-place relationships in settler societies.     

Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion: maritime England and the free seas debates

ABSTRACT

Attending to Poly-Olbion’s river dynamics, I argue that, implicitly opposing natural, inevitable unionization, Drayton demonstrates through visual and poetic means that any viable empire is forged by deliberate local choices about conjunction and affiliation. Further, I show that by reconfiguring Saxton’s maps, rejecting politically defined boundaries and perceptions, and situating three major rivers as the organizing features of the landscape and the empire, Drayton ultimately defines Britain as inherently and universally maritime. Moreover, linking Poly-Olbion to mare clausum and mare liberum debates, I reveal that Drayton situates the flow of self-aware rivers into the sea as an extension of Britain beyond its land boundaries. He thereby suggests that the eventual mixing of British waters with the larger oceans establishes the basis of Britain’s local and global maritime rights, linking regional autonomy and conjunction by choice with claims to both local offshore dominion and global freedom of navigation and trade.     

Chubut,Argentina: a contested Welsh ‘first-place’

Abstract

In an attempt to escape British hegemony, the Welsh established a Patagonian colony in 1865, in what is now the Chubut Province of Argentina. The historical struggles the immigrants faced upon settling the land are rooted in the landscape and commemorated in different versions of Patagonian regional history through provincial museum narratives that serve as a method of solidifying Welshness in Chubut. Contemporarily, the local tourism industry constructs the Welsh as the first settlers in the region, while minimally representing predecessor groups like the indigenous communities or Spanish colonials. Curiously, the representation of these other heritage communities throughout heritage displays actually serves to bolster the Welsh ‘first-place’ claims over the region. These tensions are seen throughout community-based museums in the region that assert a locally rooted hybrid identity by acknowledging local historical diversity, while simultaneously recalling and emphasising the [Welsh] homeland heritage. This paper explores how ‘first-places’ can be a source of symbolic conflict, while simultaneously serving as a dynamic, heritage construction mechanism. This research investigates how the Welsh diaspora negotiates its identity through the mobilisation of heritage, to make claims about the Chubut Province as a symbolic Welsh first-place, as well as broader Argentine heritage.     

An Intertextual Reading of the Theophany of Psalm 97

This article applies an intertextual method of reading the Psalms in order to discern the full meaning of the theophany of Ps 97. It is argued that Ps 97 actualizes the claims in Pss 93-100 that Yahweh reigns by giving the reader a (textual) theophany which would have been particularly meaningful in an exilic or post-exilic context.     

Family Property and the Limits of Intervention: The Article 27 Reforms and the PROCEDE Programme in Mexico

In the 1990s the Mexican peasants witnessed the introduction of a new Agrarian Law and the implementation of the land regularization programme, PROCEDE. In this article it is demonstrated that the privatization of previously communally held ejido land did not lead to the promised dynamic land market, nor to an increase in agricultural productivity. On the basis of an in–depth study of land tenure practices in the ejido La Canoa in Western Mexico, it is shown that the changes of 1992 did not address the main problems of peasant agriculture. The new Agrarian Law legalized practices which, although illegal, had already become quite common in ejidos throughout Mexico. In addition, it is argued that legal security does not necessarily reside in official registration by the state, but can also be based on local recognition of land rights. The main argument of the article is that property consists of complex sets of claims, rights and obligations that cannot be manipulated by forms of state intervention that reduce land tenure predicaments to technical problems.     

The idea of freedom in the writings of non-Chalcedonian Christians in the fifth and sixth centuries

ABSTRACT

This article examines how Christians who had been deprived of the direct sponsorship of the state articulated their claims for political and religious freedom. I examine four cases from the fifth and sixth century in the Eastern Roman Empire and Sasanian Iran. Here I argue that Scriptural models provided an important reservoir of political ideas that could be used by clerics to undermine state authority, whether to underscore the conditional nature of Roman claims to authority or to deny an equality of religious freedom to non-Christian co-citizens.     

4. TECHNOPOLITICS IN THE ARCHIVE: SOVEREIGNTY,RESEARCH, AND EVERYDAY LIFE

This article explores the place of the archive in the context of land claims research. This essay develops a critical approach to identity technopolitics with the aim of helping historians working with indigenous communities to ask new kinds of questions about the relationships and subject positions opened up by archivization and the myriad other technologies of land claims research. Since researchers first began preparing for the Canadian case, Delgamuukw’ and Gisday'wa v. The Queen, four decades ago, the immense stores of documentary evidence generated for the trial have given ground to numerous new claims and conflicts. Tracing the experiences of one prominent Gitxsan historical researcher who has leveraged his own archive and expertise to build genealogies for hundreds of individuals, I explore the intimate disappointments and impossible obligations that indigenous historians must mediate.     

Lost priests in ancient Mangaia

Abstract

Politics and religion in Polynesia are one and same, both concerned with appropriating and controlling sources of mana. William Wyatt Gill collected priestly lists from various Mangaians, but only published those from the reigning ariki, Nūmangātini. The lists show significant variations, suggesting that some priests disappeared partly because of their gender, but more especially due to political considerations, notably rival claims to legitimacy and authority among the various lineages and kin groups who competed for these titles. These variations highlight how particular accounts make different claims on the past, and how the Christian missions minimised the significance of sacred women who possessed great mana. By publishing Nūmangātini's version, Gill fits the missionary preference for supporting the political establishment, and echoes New Zealand's Stephenson Percy Smith, who embraced Hoani Te Whatahoro Jury's interpretation of the Māori migration, thereby marginalising knowledge claims of others.     

Liberal Government,Civil Society and Faith Communities

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between faith communities and the liberal system of government which operates in contemporary Britain. The problem addressed is as follows: liberal democracy relies upon the assumption of the validity of certain general truths: human rights, social justice, individual autonomy, and so on. In our postmodern society, however, social fragmentation has eroded the validity of such assumptions, leaving no universal or neutral benchmark through which to judge competing truth-claims. In particular, different faith traditions posit potentially incommensurable claims about what constitutes a good society. This article assesses the suggestion that in our pluralistic and differentiated society, more and more social decisions should be left to the market or to private rather than collective judgment and responsibility. It suggests various possibilities for reconceptualizing liberalism: for instance, as a modus vivendi providing a framework within which different moral outlooks can ‘live and let live’, but suggests that liberalism can have a positive moral content of its own, and need not be merely a coping mechanism for dealing with diversity.     

The First Nations Land Management Act: Twenty Years of Reconciliation

ABSTRACT

Since 1999, The First Nations Land Management Act (FNLMA) has offered First Nations the opportunity to opt out of the clauses of the Indian Act that deal with land management. To date, 78 First Nations have gone through the process of writing and ratifying their own land codes to manage their own land transactions on reserve. This article assesses the FNLMA as a potential mechanism of reconciliation, noting both the ways in which the Act marks a significant symbolic and tangible shift in First Nations governance and the ways in which it entrenches existing, and fundamentally neo-colonial, structures of power.     

Property,Authority and Citizenship: Land Claims,Politics and the Dynamics of Social Division in West Africa

In the contemporary African context of rising competition and anxiety over access to land, neoliberal policy interventions designed to clarify property rights, broaden political participation and increase official accountability have frequently provoked rather than alleviated social and political conflict. Comparing case histories of local struggles over land and authority in selected rural areas in Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire and Bénin, this paper argues that in situations where access to land has been linked historically to claims on authority and social belonging, pressures to privatize or clarify ownership have intensified debates over citizenship and governance as well as over land claims per se. Ensuing struggles over land and entitlement have intersected with national as well as local economic and political dynamics, reinforcing ‘traditional’ hierarchies, contributing to the proliferation of formal and informal governing agents and institutions, and frequently disrupting or subverting open governance and sustainable resource use, rather than helping to create conditions for sustainable development and democratization.