New Normative Grounds for Territorial Claims

Abstract

Land, Conflict and Justice: A Political Theory of Territory. By Kolers Avery. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 252 pp. $95.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-51677-8). This book begins with the observation that, along with climate change, the relationship between states and territories is one of the blind spots of modern political philosophy. Avery Kolers proposes to address both of these blind spots by outlining a “general and systematic theory of territorial rights” that makes environmental sustainability central to the legitimacy of states’ territorial claims. After introductory chapters setting out the issues and canvassing the inadequate treatments of land and territory in recent political theory, he devotes two central chapters to the core elements of his theory before turning to its application to territorial disputes. He provides an extensive typology of the different kinds of territorial claims and the impact of the various grounds on potential solutions. In the last chapter, he applies the theory to one of the most intractable territorial disputes, Israel—Palestine, outlining a novel solution that calls for a federal or other form of state capable of accommodating different relations to land. He also suggests that his theory offers a more promising approach to the territorial claims of colonized indigenous peoples than the available alternatives. While the book will be of interest to all those interested in territorial claims and in responses to impending environmental crises, my comments will focus on its application to indigenous land claims. As we would expect with any novel systematic theory, this one relies on the introduction of several new concepts and the redefinition of several old ones. It is concerned specifically with juridical territories, which are bounded geographic places in which the flows of people and materials are controlled through rules of law (p. …