Phil Graham writes:
>I'm not sure what this means. But --- Land ownership and inheritance laws
>have abstract (ideal) and subjective (agentive, active) aspects (ie.
>somebody *does* it, i.e. someone *owns* land; someone else [legally]
>acknowledges that), as well as real (concrete, material) and objective
>aspects, as well as objective, subjective, ideal and real effects. Which
>is
>to say: land ownership and inheritance laws exists as material,
>historically inculcated practices and, whether as ideas or practices,
>have
>specific, objective social effects, ramifications etc.
i am in the midst of reading donna haraway and her critical analysis of
what counts as science and facts and how deciding "what counts" is a
cultural practice. she discusses the land ownership situation in
australia, which i suspect you know better than i do. but i seemed like
another way to get at what i hear you saying.
<quote>
Like good Western scientists, the English Australian herders, holding
their leases high, believe such quantification "spatializes," that is,
removes land (or anything else) from the status of mere concrete "place,"
mired in all the tropic particularities of bodies, and puts the land in
the category of enumerated objective property, recognizable across
cultures, with all the rights of exclusiveness pertaining to quantified,
rationally defined entities whose value is able to circulate in
appropriate markets. What too many map-makers forget is that
spatialization is social practice, and there are several ways to
spatialize. The perspectivism in the history of cartography and the
metaphysics in the history of Western categories of definite objects with
quantifiable properties are both "naturalized," or better "rationalized"
---literally--- to be free of tropes. (p. 138)
she goes on to explain that the Wik Aborginal Australian's "spatialization
practices involve recursive layers of stories and metaphors that tie land
and people together in interconnected networks, which certainly have to do
w ith ownership of the land but not with exclusion and possession in the
same ways that would make sense to European geographers, lawyers, and
leaseholders" (p. 139)
what counts as Objective? who gets to decide?
kathie
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Words are the thunders of the mind.
Words are the refinement of the flesh.
Words are the responses to the thousand curvaceous moments---
we just manage it---
sweet and electric, words flow from the brain
and out the gate of the mouth.
We make books of them, out of hesitations and grammar.
We are slow, and choosy.
This is the world.
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Mary Oliver - The Leaf and the
Cloud
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Katherine_Goff@ceo.cudenver.edu
http://ceo.cudenver.edu/~katherine_goff/index.html
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