More-than-human geographies of property: Moving towards spatial justice with response-ability

Abstract

In this paper we examine how animal and more-than-human agency matters in changing property relations and the related production of spatial (in)justice. We do this by examining conflicts arising between farmers, land owners and reindeer herders in the Norwegian outfields resulting from policy imperatives towards agricultural diversification. At the heart of the conflict we find issues of animal agency and mobility that the current regulatory system negotiating the interests of different rightsholders struggles to comprehend or deal with. We propose Haraway’s concept of response-ability as one way in which more-than-human agency could be made more visible, and therefore better accounted for, in the unsettling and resettling of property relations and the law-space nexus generally. It allows us to interrogate more precisely on multiple levels of spatial and temporal production the responses available to human and nonhuman actors in various assemblages of property. Different rightsholders can have different capacities to respond when property assemblages are stabilised and destabilised. We also call for more attention to be paid to property and broader legal geographies and spatial justice in the current ‘animal’ and posthuman turn in social science.