Rights and property paradigms: Challenging the dominant construct hegemony

Abstract

The interrelationship of (human) rights and property paradigms raises particularly profound questions when played out in respect of environmental claims. It is therefore no surprise that contributions to this edition invoke ontological and epistemological concerns fundamental to the unsettled interface between the mutable richness of living spatial and socio-cultural ecologies and the abrupt reductionisms so often imposed upon them by law. At the same time it speaks of the power and dominance of property paradigms that even the most critical analyses tend to seek reformulation of property’s parameters rather than its abandonment.