Running with the land: legal-historical imagination and the spaces of modernity

Introduction to symposium ‘Reimagining land: materiality, affect and the uneven trajectories of land transformation’

“…Studying these notions about land through, for example, narratives, paintings, archival documents, or maps helps to understand how the relationship between society and land has been constructed by different people across time and space, and how land is valued within these contexts. It furthermore points to the political struggles and conflicts involved when imaginaries of land not only travel but also compete with, or triumph over, others (Delaney 2001;Sodikoff 2007). Such clashing land imaginaries reflect struggles over control of natural resources, and can be driving forces behind nature politics (Nesbitt and Weiner 2001).…”

The moral high ground in Albany: rhetorics and practices of an ‘Olmstedian’ park, 1855–1875

“…20 In this record we see some locally distinctive types of violence, such as incidents in the Hudson valley's 'rent wars.' 21 Reynolds reports significant violence in 1861 at an anti-slavery convention at which Frederick Douglass spoke and which ended in a 'riot.' The most common type of disorder which Reynolds notices in the city were brawls involving volunteer fire companies contesting for control of the incessant fires in the crowded, wooded structures.…”

Law and the historical geography of the Galilee: Israel's litigatory advantages during the special operation of land settlement

“…In his examination of the 'anti-rent wars' in mid-19th century New York State, Delaney depicts judicial opinions as representing 'determinate creation or construction of property' and theorizes that the participants' 'strategic reinterpretation of legal meaning ultimately brought about the reorganization of social space'. 13 Another example is Blomley's 'Acts, deeds, and the violences of property', which looks at the legal battle between the Canadian Pacific Railroad and a Scots Irish settler in Colonial Vancouver, and theorizes that violence is 'integral to the day-to-day reproduction of a property regime'. 14 The theoretical sophistication of Delaney's and Blomley's articles emanates not from within historical geography, but from the young and highly theorized sub-discipline of legal geography, which both authors have helped shape over the past few decades.…”