Dephysicalised Property and Shadow Lands

Not knowing or caring that life depends entirely on the material conditions and limits of a given landscape is the sign of an already dematerialised culture (Plumwood 2008, p. 141; McManus and Haughton 2006, p. 118). The dominant legal model of dephysicalised property encourages dematerialisation. Dephysicalised property has been instrumental to the dispossession of human and non-human communities from their lands and the disentanglement of integrated ecologies into separable natural resources and eco-services. The simplicity of the dephysicalised model of modern property relations masks the complex, dynamic and networked nature of peopled landscapes, allowing landholders to disown the adverse consequences of their proprietorship. This chapter critically reviews the concept of dephysicalised property, its geographical manifestations, and its corollary: the disownership and externalization of its material conditions and products. Dephysicalised property facilitates a powerful cultural fantasy that whatever externalities there may be, their cost will be borne by anonymous and future others, in the ‘distant elsewhere’ (Wackernagel and Rees 1996) of ‘shadow’ lands (Plumwood 2008, p. 139).