Subversive property: law and the production of spaces of belonging

Abstract

This thesis develops a theory of property as a spatially contingent relation of belonging. Drawing on legal geography, critical geography and feminist theory, this spatial understanding of property provides a conceptually useful way of analysing a wide range of socio-legal issues. I argue that property occurs when a relation of belonging is 'held up' by space; that is, when the wider social processes, structures and networks that constitute space give force to that relation. 'Holding up' is a more diffuse, heterogeneous, spatial process than state recognition. The relation of belonging that is held up might be between a subject and an object, as property is conventionally understood, or it might be the constitutive relation between a part and a whole, as identity is often understood (for example the relation between a white person and whiteness). Understanding property in this way reveals its broad powers - how property constitutes subjectivities, shapes social and physical spaces, how it can operate subversively. This theory of property is explored in relation to two seemingly unconnected socio-legal issues: that of indigenous resistance to long leases of their land under Australia's Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 (Cth) and that of sexuality-based asylum claims made by women in Australia, Canada and Brita in. Analysing cases from these two socio-legal contexts, I argue that what was at stake in both contexts was the production of particular spaces of belonging; that is, spaces that hold up some relations of belonging and not others. In the final chapter I unpack the conceptual issue of how 'Space is connected to the subject. Exploring the concepts of 'taking space with you' and inheritance, I put forward an understanding of the complex connections that exist across space and time, and the way those connections affect and constitute the subject.

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