Journal article
Misfits in the Polish Carpathians: pastoralism, property, and spatial justice beyond redistribution
- Abstract:
- In this article, I examine the demand for spatial justice among shepherds in Highland Poland, focusing on the ‘misfit’ between the mobile, communal nature of traditional pastoralism and the static perceptions of landscape and property underpinning Polish and European agricultural policy. The movement of animals and people through a mountain environment increasingly dominated by infrastructure, private property and commercial activity, creates considerable social and spatial friction in Highland communities. Drawing on the work of legal scholar Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, I show how shepherds seek to address these frictions by lobbying for greater political and legal recognition of their right to move through the landscape. In this way, I argue, they propose an alternative vision of spatial justice as based in and enacted through custodianship and mobility, challenging dominant ideas of spatial justice based on property rights and resource redistribution.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.0MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1177/0308275X261420919
Authors
+ John Fell Fund, University of Oxford
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/052gg0110
- Publisher:
- SAGE Publications
- Journal:
- Critique of Anthropology More from this journal
- Volume:
- 46
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 71-88
- Publication date:
- 2026-03-01
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-05-17
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1460-3721
- ISSN:
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0308-275X
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
2386396
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2386396
- Source identifiers:
-
W7131080214
- Deposit date:
-
2026-05-12
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Nicolette Makovicky
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2026. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
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