The Land, Decentralization and Democracy: Notes on Recent Publications

Abstract

A FEW YEARS AGO, hardly an important or good book about the human problems of the land was appearing. Now, to judge by the books and articles, we see that a new and very intelligent interest has been awakened. Publications are devoted to homestead and subsistence projects, such as Ralph Borsodi's and Monsignor Ligutti's, to the great and lasting agrarianism of the South, to an outright decentralization, to cooperatives as affecting rural and suburban life, and especially to the effective and democratic cooperatives of Nova Scotia.

Tasman Epiphanies: The 'Participant History' of Alan Ward

“…He apprehends a truth at the core of these communities: land is the key focus of the values and aspirations of their peoples, and the prism through which is refracted the relationship between tradition and modernity as the settler societies grow. 41 Western property rights are a recent insertion into the region, and Wardʼs life and work are a testament to the struggle to bring the concept of land as an economic commodity into line with broader Pacific views of land as living space that provides identity. The historian Klaus Neumann remarks that Pacific peoples (he was speaking about the Tolai in Papua New Guinea) live in ʻclose-upsʼ in relation to land, with every position, place and feature of land named, identified and known.…”