Human interaction with the environment, particularly when the latter is conceived as nature, is often measured against moral standards for ‘appropriate behaviour’. Different, and frequently conflicting, ways of being-in-the-world are the theme of moral geographies. This paper seeks to elucidate the relation between morality, landscape and environmental practice by focusing upon a particular Scandinavian case. The Jæren district on the south-western coast of Norway has become one of the most intensively farmed areas in the country, undergoing radical changes causing contemporary farmers to become subject to moral condemnation from a wide range of bodies and people. The paper argues that in order to understand how the culture-nature relationship reflects and produces moral judgements there is a need to investigate how the production and meaning of a lived landscape becomes a moral landscape. Two questions are addressed: What is the ‘nature’ of the moral geographies in the area? How do differing ‘moral geographies’ affect the land and its perception as landscape? Understanding the moral landscape of the Jæren district allows us to identify the dialectics and contradictions inherent in the production of the landscape, and the ways rules and regulations for appropriate behaviour are the result of these contradictions. By adopting Bourdieu‘s notion of habitus, we are able to capture how such rules work and how they shape the landscape.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

In this paper we discuss relations between kinship, law, and property enactment. A recent revision of The Norwegian Act Relating to Concession in the Acquisition of Real Property is designed to influence the relation between subjects (property owners) and objects (properties) through ceasing the obligation of residency and cultivation on certain properties, which in turn is intended to increase sales prices of the respective properties. Drawing upon empirical research conducted in four Norwegian local authority districts, we argue that responsibility for past, present, and future generations of family or kin is highly important in property enactment. Although relations between subjects and objects are powerful and inform policy actions, relations between social subjects might be just as influential and powerful. When enacting properties, people may live in more complicated worlds than is often assumed. We assert that further research in legal geography and the emerging field of ‘geographies of relatedness’ might profit from seeing kinship and property as coconstituted.