Doctoral Dissertation Research: Land Ownership, Cultural Identity, and the Legal Displacement of Family Commons in the Southeastern United States.

University Of Kentucky Research Foundation, Lexington KY

Investigators

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation project examines the legal vulnerability associated with heirs' property ownership and the cultural attachment to heirs' land among Gullah-Geechee people in the Southeastern United States. Using an integration of approaches from legal geography, critical property studies, and political ecology, and using a blend of ethnographic and archival methods, this project answers three primary research questions: How do landowners define ownership rights and negotiate land use on heirs' property? How do these practices compare to legal and judicial definitions of ownership and land use rights? How do heirs' owners resolve conflicts over landownership? The answers to these questions are important because they are relevant to the global processes of land privatization, enclosure, and the commodification of nature. Much of the existing research on these issues comes from research on the Global South, therefore it is valuable to study commonly owned family land in a place such as the U.S. where the power of law and advanced capitalism are thought to have largely erased alternative property regimes. Furthermore, this research illustrates how American property law creates surprising varieties and degrees of enclosures and commons by defining rights as bundles, which can be separated and commodified in part or whole. Finally, this project will inform debates about the extent to which property law has become placeless, by defining rights through social relationships between people instead of between humans and the land. By combining critical property studies and legal geography with political ecology, this project brings place back into an understanding of the importance property to material livelihoods and the connection of cultural identity to land. The results of this work are important for an understanding of and combating the displacement and loss of heirs' landownership beyond sites in the Southeastern United States. The future of heirs' ownership will be shaped by how landowners understand, combat, and harness a variety of legal, economic, and environmental processes that determine how land is valued and claimed. The research findings of this study will be shared with communities and organizations that are attempting to find equitable and just solutions to heirs' property conflicts, as well as disseminated via academic conferences and publications. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this project will provide support to enable a promising student to establish an independent research career.