School of Law
University of New England
2020 Kirby Seminar series
Via Webinar Wednesday 4 November 2020 at 12 noon AEDT
If interested and also to obtain a link, please register for this Kirby Seminar at:
https://une-au.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_J8-XGoBGR3GeFbgf_K2qXw
“Dephysicalised Property and Shadow Lands”
Associate Professor Nicole Graham, the University of Sydney Law School
In this Kirby seminar, Associate Professor Nicole Graham will present the argument that not knowing or caring that life depends entirely on the material conditions and limits of a given landscape is the sign of an already dematerialised culture (Plumwood 2008, 141; McManus and Haughton 2006, 118). The dominant legal model of dephysicalised property encourages dematerialisation.
Dephysicalised property has been instrumental to the dispossession of human and non-human communities from their lands and the disentanglement of integrated ecologies into separable natural resources and eco-services. The simplicity of the dephysicalised model of modern property relations masks the complex, dynamic and networked nature of peopled landscapes, allowing landholders to disown the adverse consequences of their proprietorship. This chapter critically reviews the concept of dephysicalised property, its geographical manifestations, and its corollary: the disownership and externalization of its material conditions and products. Dephysicalised property facilitates a powerful cultural fantasy that whatever externalities there may be, their cost will be borne by anonymous and future others, in the ‘distant elsewhere’ (Wackernagel and Rees 1996) of ‘shadow’ lands (Plumwood 2008, 139).
Nicole Graham is an Associate Professor in the University of Sydney Law School. She teaches and researches in the fields of property law and theory, and legal geography. Nicole has written on the relationship between law, environment and culture with a particular focus on property rights, natural resource regulation and the concept of place. Nicole has received teaching awards for her work teaching property law, is recognised as a highly effective first year specialist, and has made significant contributions to educational development in embedding Indigenous laws and perspectives into the law curriculum; and sustainability in legal education.
