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The Emergent Nature of Property Systems

Contributions towards the Design of an Inquiry System for Delineating Social Forms and their Jural Relations

G.N. Appell, Ph.D.
Brandeis University

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

SECTION ONE: AN ANALYTICAL MODEL FOR PROPERTY RELATIONS

"A second reason for the tendency to confuse or blend non-legal and legal conceptions consists in the ambiguity and looseness of our legal terminology. The word 'property' furnishes a striking example. Both with lawyers and with laymen this term has no definite or stable connotation. Sometimes it is employed to indicate the physical object to which various legal rights, privileges, etc., relate; then again--with far greater discrimination and accuracy--the word is used to denote the legal interest (or aggregate of legal relations) appertaining to such physical object. Frequently there is a rapid and fallacious shift from the one meaning to the other. At times, also, the term is used in such a 'blended' sense as to convey no definite meaning whatever.
Hohfeld 1919:28

There exists no good analysis of the concepts habitually used in land-tenure studies, and certainly no detailed critique of their applicability to cross-cultural study.
Thinking about land has been and remains largely ethnocentric.
Bohanan 1960:100


Chapter One: Basic Elements for an Analytical Model for the Discovery of Property Systems

SECTION TWO: THE RUNGUS PROPERTY SYSTEM: SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN A COGNATIC SOCIETY AND ITS RITUAL SYMBOLIZATION


Chapter Two: The Rungus Dusun: Introduction

Where the results have been, as it often has, to curtail the rights of the indigenous peoples, this has been because the colonial rulers interpreted the law to their own advantage or applied legal concepts of their own which were inapplicable to the situation....
Mair 1965:138


Chapter Three: The Rungus Village


Chapter Four: The Rungus Longhouse


Another frequent source of error has been the presupposition that native conceptions of ownership must be basically the same as those of Europeans ... To add to the confusion, the same English word has been used in different senses...
Meek 1949:11-12


Chapter Five: The Rungus Domestic Family: Creation and Devolution of Property Interests

SECTION THREE: THE DESIGN OF AN INQUIRY SYSTEM FOR DELINEATING SOCIAL FORMS AND THEIR JURAL RELATIONS

I consider it to be the cardinal error of ethnographic and social analysis: the grossly ethnocentric practice of raising folk systems like "the law", designed for social action in one's own society, to the status of an analytical system, and then trying to organize the raw social data from other societies into its categories. I have also tried to avoid the equivalent error of raising the folk systems of the Romans or Trobriand Islanders to the level of such a filing system for data which may not fit them. Such a doctrine is probably a counsel of perfection, impossible of attainment. But impossibility of attainment does not make it less desirable.
Bohannan 1957:69


Ownership, therefore, can be defined neither by such words as `communism' nor `individualism', nor by reference to `joint-stock company' system or `personal enterprise', but by the concrete facts and conditions of use. It is the sum of duties, privileges and mutualities which bind the joint owners to the object and to each other.
Malinowski 1926:20


Chapter Six: Methodological Issues in The Corporation


Chapter Seven: Methodological Problems with the Concept of Corporation, Corporate Social Grouping, and Cognatic Descent Group


Chapter Eight: Observational Procedures for Social Isolates in the Jural Realm: The Rungus Tree-focused Isolate as an Example


Chapter Nine: Some Theoretical Issues in the Analysis of Social Systems: The Problem of Cognatic Social Organization


SECTION FOUR: THE EMERGENT NATURE OF PROPERTY SYSTEMS: CHOICE, OPPORTUNISM, THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE


Chapter Ten: Emergent Structuralism


Chapter Eleven: The Kantu' Dayak

SECTION FIVE: VARIOUS FORMS OF LAND TENURE IN BORNEO

"What is required is an adequate study [of Maori land tenure] which will be based on native concepts and not on European juristic ideas..."
Firth 1959[orig. 1929]:373


Chapter Twelve: History of Land Tenure Research


Chapter Thirteen: The Bulusu' System of Land Tenure


Chapter Fourteen: The Iban Land Tenure System


Chapter Fifteen: The Bidayuh Dayak Land Tenure System


Chapter Sixteen: The Kayan System of Land Ownership

SECTION SIX: FRAGMENTED OWNERSHIP: FRAGMENTED THEORY AND COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS IN THE CONCEPT OF COMMON PROPERTY

But it is just as wrong and just as uncomprehending to cram Tiv cases into the categories of the European folk distinctions as it would be to cram European cases into Tiv folk distinctions.
Bohannan 1957:120


A lack of understanding of the conceptions and operations of property systems in other societies is a frequent cause of conflict, injustice, and exploitation.
Netting 1982:451

Chapter Seventeen: Hardin's Myth of the Commons: The Tragedy of Conceptual Confusions