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Changing Name-Tags: A Legal Anthropological Approach to Communal Lands in Portugal

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dc.contributor.author Brouwer, Roland en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2009-07-31T14:54:40Z
dc.date.available 2009-07-31T14:54:40Z
dc.date.issued 1999 en_US
dc.date.submitted 2009-01-15 en_US
dc.date.submitted 2009-01-15 en_US
dc.identifier.uri https://hdl.handle.net/10535/2870
dc.description.abstract "This paper aims to illuminate issues concerning common property rights in land using the 'thick' mode of analysis through a legal anthropological study of communal lands in Portugal. It sees the composition of the bundle of rights constituting any particular property as malleable, and argues that a successful claim to attach to it a particular name-tag (as 'state', 'common', 'private' or other land) may produce a strategic advantage. "The terminology referring to communal areas of land in Portugal differs between popular language, in which they are montes, and administrative discourse, in which they are baldios, meaning uncultivated, waste land. The Civil Code enacted in 1867 consigned such lands to the state, as municipal or parish property. State policy was to convert them into private property until the 1974 revolution led towards the restitution of the commons. "The importance of the different idioms of property law may be seen from a case study of a dispute in 1989-90 between a parish council and two villages within a neighbouring parish. The villages claimed that certain lands were baldios, and their communal lands; the council claimed that they were its parish land. The dispute arose in a sense from historical circumstances which had caused uncertainty about title to this property. But it involved issues as to the different perception of the land as baldios or private property. A â??thickâ?? analysis of the case shows the importance of the label baldios, and the specific circumstances in which a protagonist may succeed by attaching the label." en_US
dc.subject communes en_US
dc.subject common pool resources en_US
dc.subject Hardin, Garrett en_US
dc.subject anthropology en_US
dc.subject language en_US
dc.subject land tenure and use en_US
dc.subject law en_US
dc.subject community participation en_US
dc.title Changing Name-Tags: A Legal Anthropological Approach to Communal Lands in Portugal en_US
dc.type Journal Article en_US
dc.type.published published en_US
dc.coverage.region Europe en_US
dc.coverage.country Portugal en_US
dc.subject.sector Social Organization en_US
dc.subject.sector General & Multiple Resources en_US
dc.identifier.citationjournal Journal of Legal Pluralism en_US
dc.identifier.citationvolume 43 en_US
dc.identifier.citationmonth January en_US


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