Peil, Tiina at al. (eds.): Landscape, law and justice

The present volume contains 31 papers based on presentations made at an international conference on Landscape, Law and Justice held at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo in June 2003. The conference was organised by the research group on Landscape, Law & Justice, based at the Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters during the academic year 2002?2003. The focus of the group?s work, and of the concluding conference, was on philosophical and theoretical issues concerning law, equity and justice with regard to landscape. These issues derive from recent and ongoing theoretical and empirical studies of landscape. The term landscape is understood as incorporating a number of differing but overlapping ways in which the complex relationships between human societies and their physical environments are conceptualised. The work of the group focused particularly on the role of law and custom for the allocation, management and use of common resources, and the physical results in the landscape. The essays are ordered into three broad themes; these do not pretend to give comprehensive coverage of each topic but attempt to highlight some crucial aspects. The first theme deals with conceptualisation and representations of landscape and environment. The second theme concerns policies, laws and local institutions in relation to landscape. The third theme relates to local communities, property rights and landscape. Although the majority of the contributions are by geographers, the collection includes presentations by representatives of other disciplines such as landscape architecture, sociology, political science, legal history, planning, economics and other social sciences. While a number of the contributions are primarily theoretical, others include case studies from Europe, North America, Africa and the Pacific. The conference proceedings have been edited by Tiina Peil, postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Geography, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, and Michael Jones, professor of geography at the same department and leader of the Landscape, Law & Justice research group at the Centre for Advanced Study in Oslo, 2002-2003.