C) Land to Property

The idea of ownership begins to fall apart when it comes to land, for a possession is something under one's control and which one has a right to control: Land undermines both these concepts, being beyond control and above it morally. A person owns land in somewhat the sense that a flea owns its dog; land ownership is really more akin to having a patent on something: One derives the exclusive rights to benefit, but the thing itself is a concept or an area, not a commodity. When land is sold, it is the people that move, not the land - the expression that it has changed hands. And even the idea of a piece of land is an abstraction: No wall or ditch can break up the continuity of the surface of the earth; it does not really become pieces. Native beliefs usually obviate the possibility of land ownership: The land is not conceptualized as alienable, divisible objects but as a continuity, spatially and temporally. (189-190)

Savage Dreams (1994)
Rebecca Solnit

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