Looking back at "Landscape, Law and Justice". Validating a paradigm or reminiscing a project?: Review of Michael Jones, Amy Strecker, Gunhild Setten & Don Mitchell (eds.) Landscape, Law and Justice—20 Years

Abstract

The review examines the main arguments brought to the fore in Landscape, Law and Justice—20 Years, an edited volume reflecting on two decades of scholarship emerging from the Landscape, Law and Justice research project. The volume can be said to collectively challenge the representational emphasis of late twentieth-century cultural geography by redefining landscape as a materially grounded and normatively structured arena shaped by law, custom, morality, and social struggle. Across the contributions, landscape is approached not merely as a way of seeing but as a political and legal formation produced through historical practices, property relations, participation, and contestation. A central tension is identified within the volume between approaches emphasising long-term continuities of customary landscapes and those foregrounding conflict, inequality, and the continuous reproduction of injustice through social relations. The review further analyses how the contributors connect landscape studies with diverse questions such as commons, extractivism, planning, participation, affect, and more-than-human relations, thereby also extending debates on landscape justice beyond traditional human-centred frameworks. While the volume does not portray “Landscape, Law and Justice” as a unified paradigm or theoretical school, the review argues that its lasting contribution lies in establishing an enduring interdisciplinary dialogue linking human geography, landscape history, legal studies, and critical social theory through shared concerns with materiality, morality, and justice.