Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T21:36:41.717Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Landscapes of Property

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Nicholas Blomley
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

If we want to explore the social dimensions of property, we need to think of it not only historically but also geographically, entailing both practices in and representations of social space. The concept of landscape is a useful bridging device here, given its double meaning as both a material space and as a particular way of seeing space. Landscapes, in both senses, can serve to reify and naturalize dominant property relations but can also serve as spaces of contestation. Such landscapes, however, cannot be disentangled from the places in which they are positioned. I use this framework to make sense of resistance to gentrification in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, Canada, a poor neighborhood with a rich history of activism. A collective property claim by the poor has been staked out through the material use, production, and representation of an urban landscape. Such local meanings and practices, however, are threatened by “outsiders,” who are seen to map and use this landscape in very different ways.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , 1998 , pp. 567 - 612
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

I would like to thank Jeff Sommers, Eric Clark, Neil Smith and John Shayler for their comments on an earlier draft. This article has been in process for a long time; several reviewers, on two occasions, made invaluable criticisms. Versions of the article were presented at a workshop on New Forms of Governance: Theory, Research and Practice, held at the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, 24-24 October 1996, and at a seminar at the Department of Geography, University of Washington: I appreciate comments made at both places. Thanks also to the insightful comments of Bill Pake, Adrienne Burk, and Cameron Muir, participants in my graduate seminar on Law, Space and the City. My research was made possible by a SSHRC grant (401-94-1734).

References

Anderson, K. J. (1987) “The Idea of Chinatown: The Power of Place and Institutional Practice in the Making of a Racial Category,” 77 Annals of the Association of American Geographers 580–98.Google Scholar
Bender, Barbara (1993a) “Landscape—Meaning and Action,” in Bender, ed. 1993b.Google Scholar
Bender, Barbara, ed. (1993b) Landscape: Politics and Perspectives. Providence, RI: Berg Publishers.Google Scholar
Bentham, Jeremy [1843] (1978) “Security and Equality of Property,” in McPherson, C. B., ed. 1978b.Google Scholar
Berger, John (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Biddick, K. (1990) “People and Things: Power in Early English Development,” 32 Comparative Studies in Society & History 3–23.Google Scholar
Blomley, Nicholas K. (1994) Law, Space, and the Geographies of Power. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Blomley, Nicholas K. (1996) “‘Shut the Province Down’: First Nations Blockades in British Columbia, 1984-1995,” 3 B.C. Studies 5–35.Google Scholar
Blomley, Nicholas K. (1997) “Property, Pluralism and the Gentrification Frontier,” 12 Canadian]. of Law & Society 187–218.Google Scholar
Blomley, Nicholas K., & Sommers, Jeff (forthcoming) “Mapping Urban Space: Governmentality and Cartographic Struggles in Inner-City Vancouver,” in Smandych, R., ed., Governable Places: Readings on Governmentality and Crime Control. Aldershot, Eng.: Dartmouth Publishing.Google Scholar
Borrows, John (1997) “Living between Water and Rocks: First Nations, Environmental Planning and Democracy,” 47 Univ. of Toronto Law J. 417–68.Google Scholar
Bottomley, Anne (1996) “Figures in a Landscape: Feminist Perspectives on Law, Land and Landscape,” in Bottomley, A., ed., Feminist Perspectives on the Foundational Subjects of Law. London: Cavendish Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brigham, John, & Gordon, Diana R. (1996) “Law in Politics: Struggles over Property and Public Space on New York City's Lower East Side,” 21 Law & Social Inquiry 265–83.Google Scholar
Brooks, Peter, & Gewirtz, Paul, eds. (1996) Law's Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Bruce, John, Fortmann, Louise, & Nhira, Calvin (1993) “Tenures in Transition, Tenures in Conflict: Examples from the Zimbabwe Social Forest,” 58 Rural Sociology 626–42.Google Scholar
Choko, Marc, & Harris, Richard (1990) “The Local Culture of Property: A Comparative History of Housing Tenure in Montreal and Toronto,” 80 Annals of the Association of American Geographers 73–95.Google Scholar
Chouinard, Vera (1994) “Geography, Law and Legal Struggles: Which Ways Ahead?” 11 Progress in Human Geography 415–40.Google Scholar
City of Vancouver (1994a) City of Vancouver Casino Review: A Discussion Paper. Vancouver, BC: City of Vancouver.Google Scholar
City of Vancouver (1994b) Central Waterfront Port Lands: Policy Statement. Vancouver, BC: Planning Department, Vancouver, & Vancouver Port Corp.Google Scholar
Cohen, Morris R. (1927) “Property and Sovereignty,” 13 Cornell Law Q. 8–30.Google Scholar
Cooper, Davina (1996) “Talmudic Territory? Space, Law and Modernist Discourse,” 23 J. of Law & Society 529–58.Google Scholar
Cosgrove, Dennis E. (1984) Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Cosgrove, Dennis E. (1985) “Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape Idea,” 10 Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, n.s., 45–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Courier (1994) “Cope Commissioner Opposes Casino Plan,” Courier, 12 June 1994, p. 2.Google Scholar
Curnoe, Greg (1995) Deeds/Abstracts: The History of a London Lot. ed. Davey, F.. London, Ont.: Brick Books.Google Scholar
Davis, John Emmeus (1991) Contested Ground: Collective Action and the Urban Neighborhood. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delaney, David (1997) Race, Place, and the Law, 1836-1948. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Doinel, Antoine (1995) “The Incredible Shrinking Neighbourhood,” Carnegie Newsletter, 1 March, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar
Dunphy, Martin (1994) “Vancouver's Big Gamble,” Georgia Straight, 25 March–1 April, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar
Edgerton, Samuel Y. (1975) The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Engel, David M. (1990) “Litigation across Space and Time: Courts, Conflict, and Social Change,” 24 Law & Society Rev. 333–44.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, & Silbey, Susan (1995) “Subversive Stories and Hegemonic Tales: Toward a Sociology of Narrative,” 29 Law & Society Rev. 197–226.Google Scholar
Forbes, Ann A. (1995) “Heirs to the Land: Mapping the Future of the MakaluBarun,” Cultural Survival Q., Winter, pp. 69–71.Google Scholar
Ford, Richard T. (1994) “The Boundaries of Race: Political Geography in Legal Analysis,” 107 Harvard Law Rev. 1841–1921.Google Scholar
Gordon, Robert W. (1984) “Critical Legal Histories,” 36 Stanford Law Rev. 57–125.Google Scholar
Gregory, Derek (1994) Geographical Imaginations. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Grunebaum, James O. (1987) Private Ownership. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Harley, J. Brian (1988) “Maps, Knowledge and Power,” in Cosgrove, D. & Daniels, S., eds., The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Cole (1992) “The Lower Mainland, 1820-81,” in Wynn, G. & Oke, T., eds., Vancouver and Its Region. Vancouver: Univ. of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Harvey, David (1989) The Urban Experience. Cambridge. MA: Basil Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, David (1996) Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Helgerson, Richard (1992) Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jay, Martin (1992) “Scopic Regimes of Modernity,” in Lash, S. & Friedmann, J., eds., Modernity and Identity. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Keith, Michael, & Pile, Steve, eds. (1993) Place and the Politics of Identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Krueckeberg, Donald A. (1995) “The Difficult Character of Property: To Whom Do Things Belong?” 61 J. of the American Planning Association 301–9.Google Scholar
Lee, Jeff (1994) “Dislocation of Poor Downtown Residents Feared,” Vancouver Sun, 23 April, p. a5.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Henri (1991) The Production of Space, trans. Nicholson-Smith, D.. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Locke, John [1690] (1980) Second Treatise of Government. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Massey, Doreen (1994) Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
McPherson, C. B. (1978a) “The Meaning of Property,” in McPherson, ed. 1978b.Google Scholar
McPherson, C. B., ed. (1978b) Property: Mainstream and Critical Positions. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Milner, Neal (1993) “Ownership Rights and Rites of Ownership,” 18 Law & Social Inquiry 227–53.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Don (1996) The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers in the Californian Landscape. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Don (1997) “The Annihilation of Space by Law: The Roots and Implications of Anti-Homeless Law in the United States,” 29 Antipode 303–35.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Katharyne (1993) Multiculturalism, or the United Colours of Capitalism? 25 Antipode 263–94.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Katharyne (1996) “Visions of Vancouver: Ideology, Democracy and the Future of Urban Development,” 17 Urban Geography 478–501.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy (1991) Colonising Egypt. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, Donald S. (1997) “Remapping Resistance: ‘Ground for Struggle’ and the Politics of Place,” in Pile, S. & Keith, M., eds., Geographies of Resistance. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Murphy, Howard (1993) “Colonialism, History and the Construction of Place: The Politics of Landscape in Northern Australia,” in Bender, ed. 1993b.Google Scholar
Myers, G., (1996) “Naming and Placing the Other: Power and the Urban Landscape in Zanzibar,” 87 Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale Geografie 237–46.Google Scholar
Olwig, Kenneth R. (1996) “Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape,” 86 Annals of the Association of American Geographers 630–53.Google Scholar
Osborn, Bud (1998) “Editorial: ‘Raise Shit: Downtown Eastside Poem of Resistance,‘” 16 (3) Environment & Planning D: Society and Space 280–88.Google Scholar
Peluso, Nancy Lee (1996) “Fruit Trees and Family Trees in an Anthropogenic Forest: Ethics of Access, Property Zones, and Environmental Change in Indonesia,” 38 Comparative Studies in Society & History 510–48.Google Scholar
Perin, Constance (1977) Everything in Its Place: Social Order and Land Use in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Pinder, D. (1996) “Subverting Cartography: The Situationists and Maps of the City,” 28 Environment & Planning A 405–27.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary L. (1992) Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pred, Allan, & Watts, Michael John (1992) Reworking Modernity: Capitalisms and Symbolic Discontent. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Radin, Margaret J. (1993) Reinterpreting Property. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, Susan (1996) “The Tent as Cultural Symbol and Field Site: Social and Symbolic Space, ‘Topos,‘ and Authority in a Tuareg Community,” 69 Anthropological Q. 14–26.Google Scholar
Razzaz, Omar M. (1993) Examining Property Rights and Investment in Informal Settlements: The Case of Jordan,“ 69 Land Economics 341–55.Google Scholar
Robertson, Michael (1997) “Reconceiving Private Property,” 24 J. of Law & Society 465–85.Google Scholar
Rocheleau, Diane, Thomas-Stayter, B., & Edmunds, D. (1995) “Gendered Resource Mapping: Focusing on Women's Spaces in the Landscapes,” Cultural Survival Q., Winter, pp. 62–68.Google Scholar
Rose, Carol M. (1994) Property as Persuasion. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Rose, Gillian (1990) “Imagining Poplar in the 1920s: Contested Concepts of Community,” 16 J. of Historical Geography 425–37.Google Scholar
Rose, Gillian (1993) Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Ryan, Simon (1996) The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Sack, Robert D. (1980) Conceptions of Space in Social Thought. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Santos, Santos Boaventura da (1995) Toward a New Common Sense: Law, Science, and Politics in the Paradigmatic Transition. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, & Kearns, Thomas R. (1995) “Beyond the Great Divide: Forms of Legal Scholarship and Everyday Life,” in Sarat, A. & Kearns, T. R., eds., Law in Everyday Life. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Seed, Patricia (1995) Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492, 1640. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Shamir, Ronen (1996) “Suspended in Space: Bedouins under the Law of Israel,” 30 Law & Society Rev. 231–57.Google Scholar
Shayler, John (1995) “Woodwards: Give Up or Buy In?” Carnegie Newsletter, 15 April, pp. 4–5.Google Scholar
Sigurgeirson, Muggs (1994) “Waterfront Casino: An Open Letter,” Carnegie Newsletter, May 1.Google Scholar
Smith, Neil, & Katz, Cindi (1993) “Grounding Metaphor: Towards a Spatialized Politics,” in Keith & Pile, eds. 1993.Google Scholar
Soja, Edward W. (1990) Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Sommers, Jeff (1998) “Men at the Margin: Masculinity and Space in Downtown Vancouver, 1950–1986,” 19 (4) Urban Geography 287–310.Google Scholar
Vancouver Port Corporation (1994) Central Waterfront Profile. Vancouver: Port Corporation.Google Scholar
Sun, Vancouver (1984) “CRAB People Invade Waterfront,” Vancouver Sun, 20 Aug., p. a15.Google Scholar
Sun, Vancouver (1994a) “Crab Park's Views in Doubt If Waterfront Casino Built,” Vancouver Sun, 8 Aug, p. a3.Google Scholar
Sun, Vancouver (1997) “Real Estate Boom Looms for Hastings Street,” Vancouver Sun, 5 March, p. A10.Google Scholar
Waldron, Jeremy (1991) “Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom,” 39 UCLA Law Rev. 295–324.Google Scholar
Williams, Patricia J. (1991) The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar