當地景遇到法律：試論所羅門群島土地的法律化及其困境

When Landscape Encounters the Law: The Legalization of Land and Its Quandary in Solomon Islands

南島的地景是人與祖先交會的所在，也是形塑、記憶與再現歷史的場域。然而在西方法律體系進入之後，帶入了另一套人地關係的想像，人與地景的關係在法律化的過程中轉變。所羅門群島獨立（1978）之後，土地大都回歸原住民所有，也採用所謂「傳統土地制度」（customary land tenure），並將地方耆老或頭目納入法庭體系。然而看似回歸原住民文化、也由原住民自主的土地制度，卻依然無法解決土地糾紛的問題，也無法「保存傳統」。原因何在？本文首先回顧所羅門群島土地制度的改變歷程，包括土地相關法律修訂和法庭制度變革，以及當地人的反應。接著分析土地法庭檔案，透過土地糾紛中各方行動者的法庭敘事、土地實地探勘、以及攻防策略，尤其是藉由地景再現歷史的模式，探討其中透露的人／地關係的轉變。土地法律化的過程改變了土地制度，由彈性的、兼具血緣和行為的原則，改為固著的法律編碼，偏向父系繼嗣原則；此外在法庭中受到法律體系對「證據」認定的人／物二分方式、還有法律中預設的財產定義，產生了人與地景關係概念的轉向──由過程的地景（processual landscape）轉向銘刻的地景（inscriptive landscape），這同時也是將人與地景和祖先的連結根基由靈力（spiritual power）轉向繼承財產（inherited possession）的過程。法律化無法解決土地問題，我們須正視法律化過程中牽涉到的文化概念轉換。

Landscape has been where people and ancestors encounter each other in Austronesian societies; it is also the field in which history is shaped, memorized and represented. The penetration of the Western legal system brings in another mode of imagining human-land relations; furthermore, people's relationships to landscape have been transformed in the process of legalization. Since the independence of Solomon Islands in 1978, the majority of land has been returned to indigenous hands, the new legal regime has adopted 'customary land tenure', and local elders or chiefs have been incorporated into court proceedings. However, despite various implementations to incorporate indigenous practices and their land tenure, land disputes continue to be a problem in the post-independence state, and the ideal of preserving traditional human-land relationships has not been achieved. The failure calls for explanations. In this paper, I first review the history of land tenure alteration in the Solomon Islands, including the amendment of related land laws and the development of the court system, and local responses to those policies and measures. I will then analyze case files in local land courts, in particular evidence from land surveys, narratives of various agents in court hearings, and their representational tactics. The codification of land tenure cannot preserve 'tradition'. Instead it changes the nature of customary land tenure from flexibility to fixation, from one which combines biological and behavioral principles to a more rigid patrilineal rule of inheritance. The process of legalization-including the human/thing dichotomy embedded in the identification of 'evidence' in court system, and the presupposed definition of property in law-contributes to the shift of people's relation to landscape from processual to inscriptive concepts. Revealed in the contesting modes of historical representation through landscape is the transformation of how people, ancestors and landscape are associated: no longer linked by spiritual power, it turns into a matter of inherited possession. Legalization is not the sole antidote to the problem of land, and we need to look into the dynamics of cultural concepts in the process of legalization.