Law, Property, and the Geography of Violence: The Frontier, the Survey, and the Grid

By Nicholas Blomley, 2003

Physical violence, whether realized or implied, is important to the legitimation, foundation, and operation of a Western property regime. Certain spatializations -notably those of the frontier, the survey, and the grid - play a practical and ideological role at all these moments. Both property and space, I argue, are reproduced through various enactments.While those enactments can be symbolic, they must also be acknowledged as practical, material, and corporeal.


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