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Law and Agroecology pp 479–494Cite as

On the Humanity of Land

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Abstract

The land, which men inhabit and cultivate nonexclusively, is the place of history: homo comes from humus. A “rural humanism” seems naturally “whole” or “integrated”: it joins or includes fragments of experience according to criteria of practical intelligence. The “land question” regards, in conclusion, above all the qualities of coexistence between persons, and it expresses the abilities to cultivate that experience.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Capograssi (1959), pp. 269 et seqq. (original work published 1952).

  2. 2.

    Capograssi (1959), pp. 273 et seqq.

  3. 3.

    Careri (1982).

  4. 4.

    Graziani (2013), pp. 1–35, 3 et seqq. In analogous terms, by the same author: Graziani (2011), pp. 11 et seqq.; Graziani (2006a), pp. 172 et seqq.; Graziani (2006b), pp. 71 et seqq.; For some affinities, Demetrio (2013).

  5. 5.

    Preti (1968).

  6. 6.

    Vocabolario della lingua italiana (1986), vol. I. Treccani, Roma (see also www.treccani.it).

  7. 7.

    Ernout and Meillet (2001), p. 297 and p. 688 (1st edn 1932).

  8. 8.

    Benveniste (1969), p. 420.

  9. 9.

    Ernout and Meillet (2001), p. 739.

  10. 10.

    Ernout and Meillet (2001), p. 688.

  11. 11.

    Giuliani (1965), pp. 281–287.

  12. 12.

    Barthes (1984).

  13. 13.

    Steiner (1975).

  14. 14.

    Regarding geographic comprehension of the world, based that is on the reduction of the latter to a geographic map and with regard to the problem of the relations between “map” and “territory,” Farinelli (2003), p. 3, and Farinelli (2009).

  15. 15.

    In relation to which one can have, like a protrusion into the sea or like the extremity of a peninsula or continent, a capo [cape] (like that at Leuca or that at Buona Speranza).

  16. 16.

    For the idea, instead, of geographic space as a social product or of the social production of space (with reference to H. Lefebvre), in the diachrony of the sovereignty–territoriality relations, Di Martino (2010), especially pp. 12 et seqq.

  17. 17.

    As in the Cantico delle creature: “Laudato si’, mi’ Signore, per sora nostra matre terra, la quale ne sustenta et governa, et produce diversi fructi con coloriti flori et herba” (Praise be, my Lord, for our sister Mother Earth, who sustains and governs and produces different fruits with colorful flowers and grass).

  18. 18.

    Ernout and Meillet (2001), p. 287.

  19. 19.

    Benveniste (2001), pp. 226 et seqq.

  20. 20.

    On the theme of the relation between “open fields” and “closed fields” (or walled or fenced fields, en- or inclosures), it is always well to start over in reference to experiences that are not archaic, by Bloch (1931); in Italy, by Sereni (1974) (1st edn 1961). For some profiles, relative to a specific geographical area, D’Elia (1959) [from the Annuario of Liceo-ginnasio statale “G. Palmieri” of Lecce, (1958–1959)], p. 41 on, inter alia, chesure [enclosures] and, p. 54, on ortali [little vegetable garden adjacent to the house]; and D’Elia (1982).

  21. 21.

    Bloch (1931), pp. 28–29.

  22. 22.

    Instead, on agriculture without production (already set aside: different, of course, the events of the uncultivated lands [terre incolte]), in relation to the maintenance of the lands “no longer used for production purposes” in “good agricultural and environmental condition,” see Regulation (EC) 1782/2003 (Regulation of the Council that establishes common norms regarding systems of direct support in the area of common agricultural policy and institutes certain support systems in favor of farmers) and that modifies Regulations (EEC) 2019/93, (EC) 1452/2001, (EC) 1453/2001, (EC) 1454/2001, (EC) 1868/94, (EC) 1251/1999, (EC) 1254/1999, (EC) 1673/2000, (EEC) 2358/71, and (EC) 2529/2001), especially Art. 5, and Regulation (EC) 73/2009, especially Art. 6 (in Art. 146, Regulation (EC) 1782/2003 is repealed). Differently, now, Regulation (EC) 1307/2013 (Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing norms on direct payments to farmers within support systems provided for by the common agricultural policy and which repeals Regulation (EC) 637/2008 of the Council and Regulation (EC) 73/2009 of the Council).

  23. 23.

    In this perspective, Albisinni (2000), pp. 421 et seqq.

  24. 24.

    Graziani (2006b), pp. 71 et seqq.

  25. 25.

    Fiorelli (2008) L’italiano giuridico dal latinismo al tecnicismo. In: Fiorelli P, pp. 71 et seqq. (original work published 1998).

  26. 26.

    The adjective rurale [rural], in particular, is combined with nouns like “life,” “civilization,” “world,” “environment,” “landscape” and again with “community,” “society,” “population,” “village” and with “economy,” “policy,” “development” and then with “area,” “zone,” “building,” “street,” “viability,” and so forth.

  27. 27.

    For many insights, Fiorelli et al. (1962).

  28. 28.

    Crifò (2000), pp. 26–27. Still on the relations between pólis and urbs, Benveniste (2001), vol. 1, p. 281. For the events of the medieval and modern world, Costa (1999–2001).

  29. 29.

    Silone (1970), p. 20 (original work published 1930). Among the many studies, Braudel (1979), p. 450.

  30. 30.

    De Felice and Duro (1993), p. 523.

  31. 31.

    Emblematic, still, Dewey (1929), p. 4.

  32. 32.

    Searle (1995).

  33. 33.

    For a witness, Bacile di Castiglione (1873).

  34. 34.

    Silone (1970), p. 40.

  35. 35.

    So also taught in conversation, Eugenio Cannada-Bartoli.

  36. 36.

    Among the many authors, including classics, de Balzac H (1855, unfinished) Les paysans. Scènes de la vie de campagne or, in Italian literature (southern or meridionalistica) of the twentieth century, Levi C, Jovine F, Scotellaro R, and also, in his genre, Calamandrei (1989) (original work published 1939–1941). Not completely outside of this context appears, moreover, that scattered literature, often biographical or autobiographical, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, about the experience of farmers lived by men like Cavour, Jacini, the Fortunato brothers, De Viti de Marco, Einaudi (among many less well known: some trace in the lists of the universal Expositions, e.g., Torino 1884). And neither seem negligible, in this regard, that various intellectual tradition or those sensitivities and competencies, which, more or less directly, appear attributable, in southern Italy, to the lesson of the abbot Genovesi (already a professor of metaphysics and then, from 1754, of “civil economy”) and, in northern Italy, to those of Romagnosi and Cattaneo (which, among others, permit connections between statistics and history, for a nonintellectualist study of social phenomena). Humanisme intégral: problèmes temporels et spirituels d’une.

  37. 37.

    Maritain (1936), p. 15.

  38. 38.

    On this expression, used also in the plural, Orestano (1987), p. 370.

  39. 39.

    Capograssi (1959), p. 307.

  40. 40.

    Saint Paul, Second letter to the Thessalonians, 3, 10.

  41. 41.

    For another “classic,” Ridolfi (1868), especially vol. I, p. 21 (original work published 1857–1858).

  42. 42.

    For a reference almost of “juridical archeology,” Guiraud (1893) (Guiraud was the pupil and biographer of Fustel de Coulanges ND).

  43. 43.

    Spantigati (2007), pp. 119–136.

  44. 44.

    For everyone—within the framework of a long and uninterrupted critical remeditation of many “mythologies” (it is in the 1977 “Un altro modo di possedere” and 20 years earlier the study on the Abbazie benedettine)—Grossi (1992) La proprietà e le proprietà nell’officina dello storico. In: Grossi P, pp. 603 et seqq. (original work published 1988 and republished 2006, with a prologue entitled Venti anni dopo, by ESI, Napoli).

  45. 45.

    In the fervor of the doctrinal debate in Italy in the 1930s—and of the many concrete initiatives for “reform” in the sector (especially, “land reclamation”)—these are reported, in particular, in the contributions of Bolla G, Finzi E, Maiorca C, Pugliatti S, Vassalli F, as well as of Arcangeli A and of Maroi F: on this subject, Jannarelli (2006), pp. 39 et seqq.

  46. 46.

    Among the first comments, yet on the project of the Constitution, Mortati (1944–1947), pp. 3–13 (response to an inquiry on land ownership in the constitutional reform of the Italian State), and then Esposito (1949), pp. 157 et seqq. (republished in Esposito (1954), pp. 181 et seqq.), and also Mortati (1954), pp. 262 et seqq.

  47. 47.

    Giuliani (1984), pp. 101 et seqq.

  48. 48.

    In the text of the Italian Constitution—as it is easy to see—the nouns “community” and “collectivity” appear each only once (respectively, in Art. 43, in the “community of laborers or users,” and in Art. 32, in health also as “interest of the collectivity”); “society” appears twice (in Art. 4, in the duty of the citizen to undertake activities or functions that contribute to the “material or spiritual progress of society,” and in Art. 29, in the family as “natural society based on marriage”). As far as the subjective perspective and reference nouns, the most often used is “citizen” (Arts. 3, 4, 16, 17, 18, 26, 38, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 59, 75, 84, 102, 118, and 135), the least is “individual” (Art. 32). Also found are “man” (Arts. 2, 48, 51, and 117), “single” (Arts. 2, 18, and 118), and, a little more frequently, “person” (Arts. 3, 32, 111, 119, and 120).

  49. 49.

    Community comes from munus. Munus expresses the idea of duty, charge, or office or of official charge, but it implies, at the same time, that of exchange, in the sense of give in change: according to a secondary but very frequent meaning, the gift from the side of he who does (Ernout and Meillet (2001), p. 422), which nevertheless obligates the recipient to an exchange (Ernout and Meillet (2001), p. 422; Benveniste (2001), vol. I, p. 71). It is developed right from the etymology—as starting point or hermeneutic point to escape from the dialectic of the debate on the community in modern political philosophy—in the philosophical study of Esposito (2006).

  50. 50.

    Dewey (1927).

  51. 51.

    Ernout and Meillet (2001), p. 566.

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  1. Department of Legal Sciences, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy

    A. de Nitto

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche, Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy

    Massimo Monteduro

  2. Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche; Institute for the History of Law, Università del Salento; University of Münster, Münster, Germany, Lecce, Italy

    Pierangelo Buongiorno

  3. Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche, Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy

    Saverio Di Benedetto

  4. Dipartimento di Storia, Societ a e Studi sull’Uomo, Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy

    Alessandro Isoni

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de Nitto, A. (2015). On the Humanity of Land. In: Monteduro, M., Buongiorno, P., Di Benedetto, S., Isoni, A. (eds) Law and Agroecology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46617-9_26

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