The multiple and diverse ways in which people the world over feel connected to land and landscapes have come under considerable scrutiny in the ‘green’ era. Are we at the peak of a phase of ‘man controls nature’, about to reach for the first time, voluntarily, towards an inversion of this power relationship? How would such an aspiration be expressed in new systems of land ownership? 

My cross-cultural study of intergenerational land transfer in New Zealand farming families is driven by such questions. Moving beyond nation-centred scholarship that has focused on settler-Indigenous struggles over land, this study extends its reach to include families of Chinese and southern European descent, and considers the transfer and adaptations of diverse cultural values to the local land trade. In this paper I will discuss my developing concept of ‘land chains’ – a phrase that works as a metaphor across intimate and grand scales of history: from the tools of the surveying trade, to the burden for landed families desperate to ‘keep it in the family’, to ancient cultural beliefs regarding inheritance and our existence at the end of an intergenerational chain of exchange. Can land really be ‘passed on’ in this way?