ABSTRACT
Ethno-nationality and other group distinctions have been major determinants and basic manifestations of human territoriality, affecting the formation, modi operandi, and consequences of land regimes in history and their relationship to the concept of territorial sovereignty. In this chapter we explore some of the issues stemming from these associations, providing a generalized framework for, as well as relating to, the area-specific chapters which follow. Drawing mainly on the experience of the European world and its global extensions, the first section of the chapter offers some conceptual and historical observations on the property-sovereignty nexus and on the exclusionary restrictions, variously imposed, on land rights. And in the second section, a number of economic and political economy considerations of ethno-nationality and rights to land are taken up.
