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Published on Property Taskforce (http://www.propertytaskforce.org)

Property as Ontology: On Aboriginal and English Understandings of Ownership

By brad bryan
Created 2006-06-26 20:09

Bradley Bryan 13 Can. J. L. & Jurisprudence 3 (2000)

In this paper I argue that a comparison of English and Aboriginal property yields insights into the ontologically specific grounds that inform institutionalized socio-cultural practices like property. Where the foundations of English conceptions of property are highly rationalistic, Aboriginal conceptions eschew categorization and are indicative of a highly nuanced and different way of understanding the worldliness of a human being. As such, a comparison of such conceptions becomes not simply a comparison of ways of owning and possessing, but a cross-cultural comparison of ways of relating to the world at large for what are ostensibly economic purposes.

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http://www.propertytaskforce.org/node/6