Cadastral mapping

A hypothetical case of customary land tenure practices may help demonstrate how difficult it is to assimilate such practices to the bare-bones schema of a modern cadastral map. The patterns I will describe are an amalgam of practices I have encountered in the literature of or in the course of fieldwork in Southeast Asia, and although the case is hypothetical, it is not unrealistic. 

The value of the cadastral map to the state lies in its abstraction and universality. In principle, at least, the same objective standard can be applied throughout the nation, regardless of local context, to produce a complete and unambiguous map of all landed property. The completeness of the cadastral map depends, in a curious way, on its abstract sketchiness, its lack of detail—its thinness. Taken alone, it is essentially a geometric representation of the borders or frontiers between parcels of land. What lies inside the parcel is left blank—unspecified—since it is not germane to the map plotting itself. 

The cadastral map is an instrument of control which both reflects and consolidates the power of those who commission it.. . . The cadastral map is partisan where knowledge is power, it provides comprehensive information to be used to the advantage of some and the detriment of others, as rulers and ruled were well aware in the tax struggles of the 18th and 19th centuries. Finally, the cadastral map is active in portraying one reality, as in the settlement of the new world or in India, it helps obliterate the old. 

Like cadastral maps, the experimental plots of agricultural research stations cannot begin to represent the diversity and variability of farmers fields. The researchers must operate on the basis of standard, normal-range assumptions about soil, field preparation, weeding, rainfall, temperature, and so on, whereas each farmer s field is a unique concatenation of circumstances, actions, and events, some of which are knowable in advance (soil composition) and some of which are out of anyone s hands (the weather). The interactions among these and other variables are at least as important as the status of each thus the effects of an early monsoon on rocky soil that has just been weeded are different from those of an early monsoon on waterlogged land that has not been weeded. 

Both the Danish and Norwegian examples are from the valuable historical analysis in Roger J. P. Kain and Elizabeth Baigent, The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State A History of Property Mapping (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1992), p, 116. 

Kain and Biagent, The Cadastral Map, p. 33. Seas, rivers, and wastes were to be omitted since they did not bear revenue. The whole operation was guided by a manual entitled Mode d arpentage pour Timpot fonder. 

The equality was, of course, purely areal. See Kain and Biagent, The Cadastral Map, p. 225. Colbert s Forest Code of 1667 was also the first coherent attempt to codify forest space in France along sharp Cartesian lines. In this connection, see Sahlins, Forest Rites, p. 14. 

Kain, R. J. P, Baigent, E. (1992). The cadastral map in the service of the state A history of property rrmpping. Chicago University of Chicago Press. 

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