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# 11

Who can own nature? And other questions of belonging...

But who really owns land and nature? Humans have no more self-evident rights than grass, trees, and squirrels, not to speak of fungi and bacteria. Property, the conceit that state-backed human social relations give us absolute rights over things, does not go far in the realms of land and nature, where people can never fully be in charge. 

What people can share is not absolute rights over land and nature but the knowledge, affect, and social relations involved in living with them. 

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Empire’s salvage heart: Why diversity matters in the global political economy, 2012
Invitations to contemplate these words and play with your thoughts
  • What captured our attention
  • What if “Nature” does not exist
  • What if we acknowledge our relations with every entity
  • What if we invent an ecosystemic economy
  • What do you think?
  • Where does Europe begin and Where does Europe end
Collections that include this source
  • Imagine an Ecosystemic Europe
  • Imagine an Altereurope
Keep exploring
  • Cross Idea
  • Well, where does the Danube has its origin?  It seems that, against the age-old controversies between specialists, it stems from the source of the river Breg, but the water that irrigates the meadow from which the Breg rises comes from a pipe, planted straight into the ground.  An old woman who l …
  • Giovanni Ambrosio. Ius Soli. Chapter one: waiting, passing, redemption. Soils: Tessuto non tessuto. 2018-

What do you think?

Should we abandon ownership of land or at least bind it to conditions that oblige the owner to care of the land (not in the sense of cultivation, but in the sense of giving the land the chance to regenerate) and share its resources?

of our Imagination