A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
Results by Title
39 books about Property
39 books about Property
Black Property Owners in the South, 1790-1915
Loren Schweninger
University of Illinois Press, 1990
Property ownership has been a traditional means for African Americans to gain recognition and enter the mainstream of American life. This landmark study documents this significant, but often overlooked, aspect of the black experience from the late eighteenth century to World War I.
[more]
Building a Revolutionary State
The Legal Transformation of New York, 1776-1783
Howard Pashman
University of Chicago Press, 2018
How does a popular uprising transform itself from the disorder of revolution into a legal system that carries out the daily administration required to govern? Americans faced this question during the Revolution as colonial legal structures collapsed under the period’s disorder. Yet by the end of the war, Americans managed to rebuild their courts and legislatures, imbuing such institutions with an authority that was widely respected. This remarkable transformation came about in unexpected ways. Howard Pashman here studies the surprising role played by property redistribution—seizing it from Loyalists and transferring it to supporters of independence—in the reconstruction of legal order during the Revolutionary War.
Building a Revolutionary State looks closely at one state, New York, to understand the broader question of how legal structures emerged from an insurgency. By examining law as New Yorkers experienced it in daily life during the war, Pashman reconstructs a world of revolutionary law that prevailed during America’s transition to independence. In doing so, Pashman explores a central paradox of the revolutionary era: aggressive enforcement of partisan property rules actually had stabilizing effects that allowed insurgents to build legal institutions that enjoyed popular support. Tracing the transformation from revolutionary disorder to legal order, Building a New Revolutionary State gives us a radically fresh way to understand the emergence of new states.
Building a Revolutionary State looks closely at one state, New York, to understand the broader question of how legal structures emerged from an insurgency. By examining law as New Yorkers experienced it in daily life during the war, Pashman reconstructs a world of revolutionary law that prevailed during America’s transition to independence. In doing so, Pashman explores a central paradox of the revolutionary era: aggressive enforcement of partisan property rules actually had stabilizing effects that allowed insurgents to build legal institutions that enjoyed popular support. Tracing the transformation from revolutionary disorder to legal order, Building a New Revolutionary State gives us a radically fresh way to understand the emergence of new states.
[more]
The City after Property
Abandonment and Repair in Postindustrial Detroit
Sara Safransky
Duke University Press, 2023
In The City after Property, Sara Safransky examines how postindustrial decline generates new forms of urban land politics. In the 2010s, Detroit government officials classified a staggering 150,000 lots—more than a third of the city—as “vacant” or “abandoned.” Analyzing subsequent efforts to shrink the Motor City’s footprint and budget, Safransky presents a new way of conceptualizing urban abandonment. She challenges popular myths that cast Detroit as empty along with narratives that reduce its historical decline to capital and white flight. In connecting contemporary debates over neoliberal urbanism to Cold War histories and the lasting political legacies of global movements for decolonization and Black liberation, she foregrounds how the making of—and challenges to—modern property regimes have shaped urban policy and politics. Drawing on critical geographical theory and community-based ethnography, Safransky shows how private property functions as a racialized construct, an ideology, and a moral force that shapes selves and worlds. By thinking the city “after property,” Safransky illuminates alternative ways of imagining and organizing urban life.
[more]
Colonial Lives of Property
Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership
Brenna Bhandar
Duke University Press, 2018
In Colonial Lives of Property Brenna Bhandar examines how modern property law contributes to the formation of racial subjects in settler colonies and to the development of racial capitalism. Examining both historical cases and ongoing processes of settler colonialism in Canada, Australia, and Israel and Palestine, Bhandar shows how the colonial appropriation of indigenous lands depends upon ideologies of European racial superiority as well as upon legal narratives that equate civilized life with English concepts of property. In this way, property law legitimates and rationalizes settler colonial practices while it racializes those deemed unfit to own property. The solution to these enduring racial and economic inequities, Bhandar demonstrates, requires developing a new political imaginary of property in which freedom is connected to shared practices of use and community rather than individual possession.
[more]
Commodity & Propriety
Competing Visions of Property in American Legal Thought, 1776-1970
Gregory S. Alexander
University of Chicago Press, 1997
Most people understand property as something that is owned, a means of creating individual wealth. But in Commodity and Propriety, the first full-length history of the meaning of property, Gregory Alexander uncovers in American legal writing a competing vision of property that has existed alongside the traditional conception. Property, Alexander argues, has also been understood as proprietary, a mechanism for creating and maintaining a properly ordered society. This view of property has even operated in periods—such as the second half of the nineteenth century—when market forces seemed to dominate social and legal relationships.
In demonstrating how the understanding of property as a private basis for the public good has competed with the better-known market-oriented conception, Alexander radically rewrites the history of property, with significant implications for current political debates and recent Supreme Court decisions.
In demonstrating how the understanding of property as a private basis for the public good has competed with the better-known market-oriented conception, Alexander radically rewrites the history of property, with significant implications for current political debates and recent Supreme Court decisions.
[more]
Controlling Voices
Intellectual Property, Humanistic Studies, and the Internet
TyAnna K. Herrington. Foreword by Jay David Bolter
Southern Illinois University Press, 2001
TyAnna K. Herrington explains current intellectual property law and examines the effect of the Internet and ideological power on its interpretation. Promoting a balanced development of our national culture, she advocates educators’ informed participation in ensuring egalitarian public access to information. She discusses the control of information and the creation of knowledge in terms of the way control functions under current property law.
[more]
The Culture of Property
The Crisis of Liberalism in Modern Britain
Jordanna Bailkin
University of Chicago Press, 2004
What kind of property is art? Is it property at all? Jordanna Bailkin's The Culture of Property offers a new historical response to these questions, examining ownership disputes over art objects and artifacts during the crisis of liberalism in the United Kingdom. From the 1870s to the 1920s, Britons fought over prized objects from ancient gold ornaments dug up in an Irish field to a portrait of the Duchess of Milan at the National Gallery in London. They fought to keep these objects in Britain, to repatriate them to their points of origin, and even to destroy them altogether. Bailkin explores these disputes in order to investigate the vexed status of property within modern British politics as well as the often surprising origins of ongoing institutional practices. Bailkin's detailed account of these struggles illuminates the relationship between property and citizenship, which has constituted the heart of liberal politics as well as its greatest weakness.
Drawing on court transcripts, gallery archives, exhibition reviews, private correspondence—and a striking series of cartoons and photographs—The Culture of Property traverses the history of gender, material culture, urban life, colonialism, Irish and Scottish nationalism, and British citizenship. This fascinating book challenges recent scholarship in museum studies in light of ongoing culture wars. It should be required reading for cultural policy makers, museum professionals, and anyone interested in the history of art and Britain.
Drawing on court transcripts, gallery archives, exhibition reviews, private correspondence—and a striking series of cartoons and photographs—The Culture of Property traverses the history of gender, material culture, urban life, colonialism, Irish and Scottish nationalism, and British citizenship. This fascinating book challenges recent scholarship in museum studies in light of ongoing culture wars. It should be required reading for cultural policy makers, museum professionals, and anyone interested in the history of art and Britain.
[more]
Dimensions of Property in Reproductive Economies
Practices, Structures, and Discourses
Edited by Irina Herb, Stefanie Graefe, and Susanne Lettow
Campus Verlag, 2024
A study of property in transitional economies of reproduction.
Besides reshaping human generativity, reproductive technologies such as IVF, egg donation, and surrogacy give rise to whole new value-creation systems and forms of ownership of the human body. The project is designed as a philosophical and sociological dual project with the aim of exploring discursive, institutional, and subjective processes of doing property in transnational economies of reproduction. It focuses, on the one hand, on bioethical problems surrounding ownership of the human body and, on the other hand, on patterns of interpretation and practices employed by various players in the context of the transnational propertization of human ova in Germany and Spain.
Besides reshaping human generativity, reproductive technologies such as IVF, egg donation, and surrogacy give rise to whole new value-creation systems and forms of ownership of the human body. The project is designed as a philosophical and sociological dual project with the aim of exploring discursive, institutional, and subjective processes of doing property in transnational economies of reproduction. It focuses, on the one hand, on bioethical problems surrounding ownership of the human body and, on the other hand, on patterns of interpretation and practices employed by various players in the context of the transnational propertization of human ova in Germany and Spain.
[more]
Disrupting the Speculative City
Property, Power and Community Resistance in London
Amy Horton and Joe Penny
University College London, 2024
Analyzes urban land value extraction and the resulting community displacement in London.
Disrupting the Speculative City tells the story of how the Haringey Development Vehicle community coalition, defeated one of the most ambitious programs of state-led gentrification in London. Drawing on the accounts of those at the heart of local statecraft and grassroots organizations, and analyzing crucial developments in property investment, this book explores a significant and inspirational success for campaigners in London, where social cleansing has become the default outcome of redevelopment.
Disrupting the Speculative City tells the story of how the Haringey Development Vehicle community coalition, defeated one of the most ambitious programs of state-led gentrification in London. Drawing on the accounts of those at the heart of local statecraft and grassroots organizations, and analyzing crucial developments in property investment, this book explores a significant and inspirational success for campaigners in London, where social cleansing has become the default outcome of redevelopment.
[more]
From Property to Family
American Dog Rescue and the Discourse of Compassion
Andrei S. Markovits and Katherine N. Crosby
University of Michigan Press, 2014
In the wake of the considerable cultural changes and social shifts that the United States and all advanced industrial democracies have experienced since the late 1960s and early 1970s, social discourse around the disempowered has changed in demonstrable ways. In From Property to Family: American Dog Rescue and the Discourse of Compassion, Andrei Markovits and Katherine Crosby describe a “discourse of compassion” that actually alters the way we treat persons and ideas once scorned by the social mainstream. This “culture turn” has also affected our treatment of animals inaugurating an accompanying “animal turn”. In the case of dogs, this shift has increasingly transformed the discursive category of the animal from human companion to human family member. One of the new institutions created by this attitudinal and behavioral change towards dogs has been the breed specific canine rescue organization, examples of which have arisen all over the United States beginning in the early 1980s and massively proliferating in the 1990s and subsequent years. While the growing scholarship on the changed dimension of the human-animal relationship attests to its social, political, moral and intellectual salience to our contemporary world, the work presented in Markovits and Crosby’s book constitutes the first academic research on the particularly important institution of breed specific dog rescue.
[more]
Games of Property
Law, Race, Gender, and Faulkner's Go Down, Moses
Thadious M. Davis
Duke University Press, 2003
In Games of Property, distinguished critic Thadious M. Davis provides a dazzling new interpretation of William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses. Davis argues that in its unrelenting attention to issues related to the ownership of land and people, Go Down, Moses ranks among Faulkner’s finest and most accomplished works. Bringing together law, social history, game theory, and feminist critiques, she shows that the book is unified by games—fox hunting, gambling with cards and dice, racing—and, like the law, games are rule-dependent forms of social control and commentary. She illuminates the dual focus in Go Down, Moses on property and ownership on the one hand and on masculine sport and social ritual on the other. Games of Property is a masterful contribution to understandings of Faulkner’s fiction and the power and scope of property law.
[more]
Gender, Work and Property
An Ethnographic Study of Value in a Spanish Village
Nancy Konvalinka
Campus Verlag, 2013
Why do young men born in many small villages in Spain tend, at the end of the twentieth century, to stay there to live, often remaining unmarried, while young women from the same villages tend to leave? In Gender, Work, and Property, Nancy Konvalinka explores this phenomenon using the case of one small village in northwestern Spain, and she extrapolates her findings there to understand similar processes elsewhere in Europe.
The changes in this village are analyzed and documented through long-term ethnographic research, participant observation, interviews, kinship diagrams, life-course models, and archive study in order to help bring the village alive for the reader.
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The Global Debate over Constitutional Property
Lessons for American Takings Jurisprudence
Gregory S. Alexander
University of Chicago Press, 2006
Countries around the world are heatedly debating whether property should be a constitutional right. But American lawyers have largely ignored this debate, which is divided into two clear camps: those who believe making property a constitutional right undermines democracy by fostering inequality, and those who believe it provides the security necessary to make democracy possible. In The Global Debate over Constitutional Property, Gregory Alexander recasts this discussion, arguing that both sides overlook a key problem: that constitutional protection, or lack thereof, has little bearing on how a society actually treats property.
A society’s traditions and culture, Alexander argues, have a much greater effect on property rights. Laws must aim, then, to change cultural ideas of property, rather than deem whether one has the right to own it. Ultimately, Alexander builds a strong case for improving American takings law by borrowing features from the laws of other countries—particularly those laws based on the idea that owning property not only confers rights, but also entails responsibilities to society as a whole.
A society’s traditions and culture, Alexander argues, have a much greater effect on property rights. Laws must aim, then, to change cultural ideas of property, rather than deem whether one has the right to own it. Ultimately, Alexander builds a strong case for improving American takings law by borrowing features from the laws of other countries—particularly those laws based on the idea that owning property not only confers rights, but also entails responsibilities to society as a whole.
[more]
The Goldsmith's Debt
Conceptions of Property in Early Modern Art
Shira Brisman
University of Chicago Press, 2026
Reveals how art shaped the economy, social order, and legal claims during the rise of capitalism.
In the sixteenth century, German goldsmiths played a unique role in articulating property claims and social values. These artisans shaped precious metals into visible expressions of domination, subordination, and obligation. The objects they crafted played a major role in the practices of exchange and inheritance that were reconfiguring a tumultuous economic landscape. Cities commissioned goldsmiths to transform revenue into goblets that could be given as diplomatic gifts or reconverted into currency in times of war, and courts used serving implements as promises of credit.
With The Goldsmith’s Debt, art historian Shira Brisman offers the first book-length study of the Nuremberg goldsmith Christoph Jamnitzer (1563–1618), who created elaborate gilded silver drinking cups that he crafted into unexpected forms, with designs ranging from racialized heads to mining scenes. Considering how works of art can shape a social order, Brisman explores what Jamnitzer’s etchings and goblets reveal about how goldsmiths shared ideas and how their patrons used commissioned works to legitimize their claims over land and the rights of others. Drawing on a range of textual and material evidence—including commentaries on Roman and customary laws, wills and civic statutes, printed designs, and firsthand study of lidded cups in dozens of major European institutions—this unprecedented study places the goldsmith at the heart of the era’s arguments about how people and lands should be subjugated. Brisman reveals the insidious side of these objects that were often used to advance socially conservative agendas, and she presents radical proposals for addressing inequity in the world of ornament prints.
In the sixteenth century, German goldsmiths played a unique role in articulating property claims and social values. These artisans shaped precious metals into visible expressions of domination, subordination, and obligation. The objects they crafted played a major role in the practices of exchange and inheritance that were reconfiguring a tumultuous economic landscape. Cities commissioned goldsmiths to transform revenue into goblets that could be given as diplomatic gifts or reconverted into currency in times of war, and courts used serving implements as promises of credit.
With The Goldsmith’s Debt, art historian Shira Brisman offers the first book-length study of the Nuremberg goldsmith Christoph Jamnitzer (1563–1618), who created elaborate gilded silver drinking cups that he crafted into unexpected forms, with designs ranging from racialized heads to mining scenes. Considering how works of art can shape a social order, Brisman explores what Jamnitzer’s etchings and goblets reveal about how goldsmiths shared ideas and how their patrons used commissioned works to legitimize their claims over land and the rights of others. Drawing on a range of textual and material evidence—including commentaries on Roman and customary laws, wills and civic statutes, printed designs, and firsthand study of lidded cups in dozens of major European institutions—this unprecedented study places the goldsmith at the heart of the era’s arguments about how people and lands should be subjugated. Brisman reveals the insidious side of these objects that were often used to advance socially conservative agendas, and she presents radical proposals for addressing inequity in the world of ornament prints.
[more]
The Grasping Hand
"Kelo v. City of New London" and the Limits of Eminent Domain
Ilya Somin
University of Chicago Press, 2015
In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London, Connecticut, could condemn fifteen residential properties in order to transfer them to a new private owner. Although the Fifth Amendment only permits the taking of private property for “public use,” the Court ruled that the transfer of condemned land to private parties for “economic development” is permitted by the Constitution—even if the government cannot prove that the expected development will ever actually happen. The Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London empowered the grasping hand of the state at the expense of the invisible hand of the market.
In this detailed study of one of the most controversial Supreme Court cases in modern times, Ilya Somin argues that Kelo was a grave error. Economic development and “blight” condemnations are unconstitutional under both originalist and most “living constitution” theories of legal interpretation. They also victimize the poor and the politically weak for the benefit of powerful interest groups and often destroy more economic value than they create. Kelo itself exemplifies these patterns. The residents targeted for condemnation lacked the influence needed to combat the formidable government and corporate interests arrayed against them. Moreover, the city’s poorly conceived development plan ultimately failed: the condemned land lies empty to this day, occupied only by feral cats. The Supreme Court’s unpopular ruling triggered an unprecedented political reaction, with forty-five states passing new laws intended to limit the use of eminent domain. But many of the new laws impose few or no genuine constraints on takings. The Kelo backlash led to significant progress, but not nearly as much as it may have seemed.
Despite its outcome, the closely divided 5-4 ruling shattered what many believed to be a consensus that virtually any condemnation qualifies as a public use under the Fifth Amendment. It also showed that there is widespread public opposition to eminent domain abuse. With controversy over takings sure to continue, The Grasping Hand offers the first book-length analysis of Kelo by a legal scholar, alongside a broader history of the dispute over public use and eminent domain and an evaluation of options for reform.
In this detailed study of one of the most controversial Supreme Court cases in modern times, Ilya Somin argues that Kelo was a grave error. Economic development and “blight” condemnations are unconstitutional under both originalist and most “living constitution” theories of legal interpretation. They also victimize the poor and the politically weak for the benefit of powerful interest groups and often destroy more economic value than they create. Kelo itself exemplifies these patterns. The residents targeted for condemnation lacked the influence needed to combat the formidable government and corporate interests arrayed against them. Moreover, the city’s poorly conceived development plan ultimately failed: the condemned land lies empty to this day, occupied only by feral cats. The Supreme Court’s unpopular ruling triggered an unprecedented political reaction, with forty-five states passing new laws intended to limit the use of eminent domain. But many of the new laws impose few or no genuine constraints on takings. The Kelo backlash led to significant progress, but not nearly as much as it may have seemed.
Despite its outcome, the closely divided 5-4 ruling shattered what many believed to be a consensus that virtually any condemnation qualifies as a public use under the Fifth Amendment. It also showed that there is widespread public opposition to eminent domain abuse. With controversy over takings sure to continue, The Grasping Hand offers the first book-length analysis of Kelo by a legal scholar, alongside a broader history of the dispute over public use and eminent domain and an evaluation of options for reform.
[more]
The Grasping Hand
"Kelo v. City of New London" and the Limits of Eminent Domain
Ilya Somin
University of Chicago Press, 2015
In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London, Connecticut, could condemn fifteen residential properties in order to transfer them to a new private owner. Although the Fifth Amendment only permits the taking of private property for “public use,” the Court ruled that the transfer of condemned land to private parties for “economic development” is permitted by the Constitution—even if the government cannot prove that the expected development will ever actually happen. The Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London empowered the grasping hand of the state at the expense of the invisible hand of the market.
In this detailed study of one of the most controversial Supreme Court cases in modern times, Ilya Somin argues that Kelo was a grave error. Economic development and “blight” condemnations are unconstitutional under both originalist and most “living constitution” theories of legal interpretation. They also victimize the poor and the politically weak for the benefit of powerful interest groups and often destroy more economic value than they create. Kelo itself exemplifies these patterns. The residents targeted for condemnation lacked the influence needed to combat the formidable government and corporate interests arrayed against them. Moreover, the city’s poorly conceived development plan ultimately failed: the condemned land lies empty to this day, occupied only by feral cats. The Supreme Court’s unpopular ruling triggered an unprecedented political reaction, with forty-five states passing new laws intended to limit the use of eminent domain. But many of the new laws impose few or no genuine constraints on takings. The Kelo backlash led to significant progress, but not nearly as much as it may have seemed.
Despite its outcome, the closely divided 5-4 ruling shattered what many believed to be a consensus that virtually any condemnation qualifies as a public use under the Fifth Amendment. It also showed that there is widespread public opposition to eminent domain abuse. With controversy over takings sure to continue, The Grasping Hand offers the first book-length analysis of Kelo by a legal scholar, alongside a broader history of the dispute over public use and eminent domain and an evaluation of options for reform.
In this detailed study of one of the most controversial Supreme Court cases in modern times, Ilya Somin argues that Kelo was a grave error. Economic development and “blight” condemnations are unconstitutional under both originalist and most “living constitution” theories of legal interpretation. They also victimize the poor and the politically weak for the benefit of powerful interest groups and often destroy more economic value than they create. Kelo itself exemplifies these patterns. The residents targeted for condemnation lacked the influence needed to combat the formidable government and corporate interests arrayed against them. Moreover, the city’s poorly conceived development plan ultimately failed: the condemned land lies empty to this day, occupied only by feral cats. The Supreme Court’s unpopular ruling triggered an unprecedented political reaction, with forty-five states passing new laws intended to limit the use of eminent domain. But many of the new laws impose few or no genuine constraints on takings. The Kelo backlash led to significant progress, but not nearly as much as it may have seemed.
Despite its outcome, the closely divided 5-4 ruling shattered what many believed to be a consensus that virtually any condemnation qualifies as a public use under the Fifth Amendment. It also showed that there is widespread public opposition to eminent domain abuse. With controversy over takings sure to continue, The Grasping Hand offers the first book-length analysis of Kelo by a legal scholar, alongside a broader history of the dispute over public use and eminent domain and an evaluation of options for reform.
[more]
Havings
Steps Towards a New Economic Philosophy of Property and Beyond
Carsten Herrmann-Pillath
Campus Verlag, 2025
Redefines ownership by introducing the concept of “havings,” a radical framework that challenges the economic and legal foundations of capitalism and socialism.
Rethinking the foundations of ownership, Havings confronts conventional notions of property by introducing a radical new framework. Moving beyond the ideological constraints of capitalism and socialism, Carsten Herrmann-Pillath investigates how “having” can reshape economic and legal thought. Through an analysis of appropriation and assignment alongside possession and ownership, the book redefines the structures that govern our relationships with material and immaterial assets.
Through a blend of economic theory, sociology, and philosophy, Havings presents two compelling cases that demonstrate the real-world implications of this shift in perspective. The final chapter offers a daring vision for a post-capitalist economic system grounded in the multidimensionality of having. A thought-provoking read for those interested in economics, law, and social sciences, this work opens up new pathways for reimagining economic systems and property rights in an era of increasing inequality and global transformation.
Rethinking the foundations of ownership, Havings confronts conventional notions of property by introducing a radical new framework. Moving beyond the ideological constraints of capitalism and socialism, Carsten Herrmann-Pillath investigates how “having” can reshape economic and legal thought. Through an analysis of appropriation and assignment alongside possession and ownership, the book redefines the structures that govern our relationships with material and immaterial assets.
Through a blend of economic theory, sociology, and philosophy, Havings presents two compelling cases that demonstrate the real-world implications of this shift in perspective. The final chapter offers a daring vision for a post-capitalist economic system grounded in the multidimensionality of having. A thought-provoking read for those interested in economics, law, and social sciences, this work opens up new pathways for reimagining economic systems and property rights in an era of increasing inequality and global transformation.
[more]
Institutional Foundations of Impersonal Exchange
Theory and Policy of Contractual Registries
Benito Arruñada
University of Chicago Press, 2012
Governments and development agencies spend considerable resources building property and company registries to protect property rights. When these efforts succeed, owners feel secure enough to invest in their property and banks are able use it as collateral for credit. Similarly, firms prosper when entrepreneurs can transform their firms into legal entities and thus contract more safely. Unfortunately, developing registries is harder than it may seem to observers, especially in developed countries, where registries are often taken for granted. As a result, policies in this area usually disappoint.
Benito Arruñada aims to avoid such failures by deepening our understanding of both the value of registries and the organizational requirements for constructing them. Presenting a theory of how registries strengthen property rights and reduce transaction costs, he analyzes the major trade-offs and proposes principles for successfully building registries in countries at different stages of development. Arruñada focuses on land and company registries, explaining the difficulties they face, including current challenges like the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States and the dubious efforts made in developing countries toward universal land titling. Broadening the account, he extends his analytical framework to other registries, including intellectual property and organized exchanges of financial derivatives. With its nuanced presentation of the theoretical and practical implications, Institutional Foundations of Impersonal Exchange significantly expands our understanding of how public registries facilitate economic growth.
[more]
The Marriage Exchange
Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300-1550
Martha C. Howell
University of Chicago Press, 1998
Medieval Douai was one of the wealthiest cloth towns of Flanders, and it left an enormous archive documenting the personal financial affairs of its citizens—wills, marriage agreements, business contracts, and records of court disputes over property rights of all kinds.
Based on extensive research in this archive, this book reveals how these documents were produced in a centuries-long effort to regulate—and ultimately to redefine—property and gender relations. At the center of the transformation was a shift from a marital property regime based on custom to one based on contract. In the former, a widow typically inherited her husband's property; in the latter, she shared it with or simply held it for his family or offspring. Howell asks why the law changed as it did and assesses the law's effects on both social and gender meanings but she insists that the reform did not originate in general dissatisfaction with custom or a desire to disempower widows. Instead, it was born in a complex economic, social and cultural history during which Douaisiens gradually came to think about both property and gender in new ways.
Based on extensive research in this archive, this book reveals how these documents were produced in a centuries-long effort to regulate—and ultimately to redefine—property and gender relations. At the center of the transformation was a shift from a marital property regime based on custom to one based on contract. In the former, a widow typically inherited her husband's property; in the latter, she shared it with or simply held it for his family or offspring. Howell asks why the law changed as it did and assesses the law's effects on both social and gender meanings but she insists that the reform did not originate in general dissatisfaction with custom or a desire to disempower widows. Instead, it was born in a complex economic, social and cultural history during which Douaisiens gradually came to think about both property and gender in new ways.
[more]
Northern Lights
Essays in Private Law in Memory of Professor David Carey Miller
Roderick R.M. Paisley
Aberdeen University Press, 2018
Professor David Carey Miller (1941–2016) held the Chair of Property Law at the University of Aberdeen, and in that capacity inspired generations of students to explore a range of questions and problems that interested him. Among his eclectic writings, his contributions to comparative law, Scots Property law and to land reform in South Africa were recognised as being of particular importance in his lifetime.
In Northern Lights: Essays in Private Law in Memory of Professor David Carey Miller, colleagues, friends and students of Professor Carey Miller seek to honour his memory by advancing those core lines of enquiry that featured so prominently in his research. Some, writing on comparative law, display the remarkably different consequences that follow from the divergent ways in which the civilian and the common law traditions classify legal questions, problems and claims. Others, writing on land law in South Africa and Scotland, reflect on changing concepts of “ownership”. For example, it is suggested at one point that landowners in Scotland are increasingly expected to do something productive or useful with their land in order to continue as owners. Still other contributors focus on Scots law, a system that has traditionally been seen as “mixed”, that is to say influenced by both the civilian and the common law traditions. Research into Scots Private law draws attention to the merits of rigorous research into core principles of the legal system, so as to facilitate the deduction of answers to new legal questions when they arise. In addition, some writers explore the use of established legal principles to evaluate proposed changes to the law in response to factors such as changing and social commercial reality. All of the essays in the volume seek to pay tribute to a great friend and scholar.
In Northern Lights: Essays in Private Law in Memory of Professor David Carey Miller, colleagues, friends and students of Professor Carey Miller seek to honour his memory by advancing those core lines of enquiry that featured so prominently in his research. Some, writing on comparative law, display the remarkably different consequences that follow from the divergent ways in which the civilian and the common law traditions classify legal questions, problems and claims. Others, writing on land law in South Africa and Scotland, reflect on changing concepts of “ownership”. For example, it is suggested at one point that landowners in Scotland are increasingly expected to do something productive or useful with their land in order to continue as owners. Still other contributors focus on Scots law, a system that has traditionally been seen as “mixed”, that is to say influenced by both the civilian and the common law traditions. Research into Scots Private law draws attention to the merits of rigorous research into core principles of the legal system, so as to facilitate the deduction of answers to new legal questions when they arise. In addition, some writers explore the use of established legal principles to evaluate proposed changes to the law in response to factors such as changing and social commercial reality. All of the essays in the volume seek to pay tribute to a great friend and scholar.
[more]
Nullius
The Anthropology of Ownership, Sovereignty, and the Law in India
Kriti Kapila
HAU, 2022
Nullius is an award-winning anthropological account of the troubled status of ownership in India and its consequences for our understanding of sovereignty and social relations. Though property rights and ownership are said to be a cornerstone of modern law, in the Indian case they are often a spectral presence. Kapila offers a detailed study of paradigms where proprietary relations have been erased, denied, misappropriated.
The book examines three forms of negation, where the Indian state de facto adopted doctrines of terra nullius (in the erasure of indigenous title), res nullius (in acquiring museum objects), and, controversially, corpus nullius (in denying citizens ownership of their bodies under biometrics). The result is a pathbreaking reconnection of questions of property, exchange, dispossession, law, and sovereignty.
Nullius is the winner of the 2024 Bernard S. Cohn Prize, Association of Asian Studies.
[more]
Optional Law
The Structure of Legal Entitlements
Ian Ayres
University of Chicago Press, 2005
Spurred by the advances in option theory that have been remaking financial and economic scholarship over the past thirty years, a revolution is taking shape in the way legal scholars conceptualize property and the way it is protected by the law. Ian Ayres's Optional Law explores how option theory is overthrowing many accepted wisdoms and producing tangible new tools for courts in deciding cases.
Ayres identifies flaws in the current system and shows how option theory can radically expand and improve the ways that lawmakers structure legal entitlements. An option-based system, Ayres shows, gives parties the option to purchase—or the option to sell—the relevant legal entitlement. Choosing to exercise a legal option forces decisionmakers to reveal information about their own valuation of the entitlement. And, as with auctions, entitlements in option-based law naturally flow to those who value them the most. Seeing legal entitlements through this lens suggests a variety of new entitlement structures from which lawmakers might choose. Optional Law provides a theory for determining which structure is likely to be most effective in harnessing parties' private information.
Proposing a practical approach to the foundational question of how to allocate and protect legal rights, Optional Law will be applauded by legal scholars and professionals who continue to seek new and better ways of fostering both equitable and efficient legal rules.
Ayres identifies flaws in the current system and shows how option theory can radically expand and improve the ways that lawmakers structure legal entitlements. An option-based system, Ayres shows, gives parties the option to purchase—or the option to sell—the relevant legal entitlement. Choosing to exercise a legal option forces decisionmakers to reveal information about their own valuation of the entitlement. And, as with auctions, entitlements in option-based law naturally flow to those who value them the most. Seeing legal entitlements through this lens suggests a variety of new entitlement structures from which lawmakers might choose. Optional Law provides a theory for determining which structure is likely to be most effective in harnessing parties' private information.
Proposing a practical approach to the foundational question of how to allocate and protect legal rights, Optional Law will be applauded by legal scholars and professionals who continue to seek new and better ways of fostering both equitable and efficient legal rules.
[more]
Oyster Wars and the Public Trust
Property, Law, and Ecology in New Jersey History
Bonnie J. McCay
University of Arizona Press, 1998
Who owns tidal waters? Are oyster beds common holdings or private property? Questions first raised in colonial New Jersey helped shape American law by giving rise to the public trust doctrine. Today that concept plays a critical role in public advocacy and environmental law.
Bonnie McCay now puts that doctrine in perspective by tracing the history of attempts to defend common resources against privatization. She tells of conflicts in New Jersey communities over the last two centuries: how fishermen dependent on common-use rights employed poaching, piracy, and test cases to protect their stake in tidal resources, and how oyster planters whose businesses depended on the enclosure of marine commons engineered test cases of their own to seek protection for their claims.
McCay presents some of the most significant cases relating to fishing and waterfront development, describing how the oyster wars were fought on the waters and in the court rooms—and how the public trust doctrine was sometimes reinterpreted to support private interests. She explores the events and people behind the proceedings and addresses the legal, social, and ecological issues these cases represent.
Oyster Wars and the Public Trust is an important study of contested property rights from an anthropological perspective that also addresses significant issues in political ecology, institutional economics, environmental history, and the evolution of law. It contributes to our understanding of how competing claims to resources have evolved in the United States and shows that making nature a commodity remains a moral problem even in a market-driven economy.
Bonnie McCay now puts that doctrine in perspective by tracing the history of attempts to defend common resources against privatization. She tells of conflicts in New Jersey communities over the last two centuries: how fishermen dependent on common-use rights employed poaching, piracy, and test cases to protect their stake in tidal resources, and how oyster planters whose businesses depended on the enclosure of marine commons engineered test cases of their own to seek protection for their claims.
McCay presents some of the most significant cases relating to fishing and waterfront development, describing how the oyster wars were fought on the waters and in the court rooms—and how the public trust doctrine was sometimes reinterpreted to support private interests. She explores the events and people behind the proceedings and addresses the legal, social, and ecological issues these cases represent.
Oyster Wars and the Public Trust is an important study of contested property rights from an anthropological perspective that also addresses significant issues in political ecology, institutional economics, environmental history, and the evolution of law. It contributes to our understanding of how competing claims to resources have evolved in the United States and shows that making nature a commodity remains a moral problem even in a market-driven economy.
[more]
Peace, Preference, and Property
Return Migration after Violent Conflict
Sandra F. Joireman
University of Michigan Press, 2022
Growing numbers of people are displaced by war and violent conflict. In Ukraine, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Syria, and elsewhere violence pushes civilian populations from their homes and sometimes from their countries, making them refugees. In previous decades, millions of refugees and displaced people returned to their place of origin after conflict or were resettled in countries in the Global North. Now displacements last longer, the number of people returning home is lower, and opportunities for resettlement are shrinking. More and more people spend decades in refugee camps or displaced within their own countries, raising their children away from their home communities and cultures. In this context, international policies encourage return to place of origin.
Using case studies and first-person accounts from interviews and fieldwork in post-conflict settings such as Uganda, Liberia, and Kosovo, Sandra F. Joireman highlights the divergence between these policies and the preferences of conflict-displaced people. Rather than looking from the top down, at the rights that people have in international and domestic law, the perspective of this text is from the ground up—examining individual and household choices after conflict. Some refugees want to go home, some do not want to return, some want to return to their countries of origin but live in a different place, and others are repatriated against their will when they have no other options. Peace, Preference, and Property suggests alternative policies that would provide greater choice for displaced people in terms of property restitution and solutions to displacement.
[more]
Philodemus, On Property Management
Voula Tsouna
SBL Press, 2013
Philodemus was an important Epicurean philosopher active in southern Italy in the first century B.C.E. His treatise On Property Management, whose surviving part is completely translated here into English for the first time, focuses primarily on the vices or virtues involved in the acquisition and preservation of property and wealth. The extant remains of the work contain the most extensive and thorough treatment of property management found in any Hellenistic author. Philodemus criticizes rival writings by Xenophon and Theophrastus on the subject of oikonomia, or property management, and defends his own Epicurean views on the topic. More systematic and philosophical than rival approaches, the treatise clarifies many moral issues pertaining to the possession and preservation of property and wealth and provides plausible answers to a cluster of moral questions.
[more]
The Political Economy of Distributism
Property, Liberty, and the Common Good
Alexander William Salter
Catholic University of America Press, 2023
In recent years, prominent scholars, public intellectuals, and politicians have advocated reforming America’s economic model to embrace “common-good capitalism.” Catholic social teaching is a major influence on this movement. Is common-good capitalism compatible with the historical American commitments to private property rights and ordered liberty? What resources from Catholic social teaching can help orient free enterprise towards the common good? This book is the first scholarly inquiry into these exciting new questions.
We can better understand common-good capitalism by exploring the political economy of distributism. Formulated in the early 20th century by prominent Catholic intellectuals such as Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton, distributism emphasizes the importance of widely dispersed property ownership for human flourishing. Distributist thinkers, opposed both to capitalism and socialism, sought a humane approach to politics and economics that reflected the truths of Catholic social teaching.
Some of the distributists’ claims about markets and government must be revised in light of contemporary social science. Nevertheless, their political-economic vision contains profound truths about the human condition, which social scientists would be unwise to ignore. Distributism’s insights about the nature of liberty and the social foundations of human dignity can improve ongoing conversations among economists, political scientists, and philosophers.
The Political Economy of Distributism explores distributism both as a research program and a blueprint for political-economic reform. As many are reconsidering the relationship between markets and government, this timely book demonstrates the perennial relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition to public affairs. Academics, public servants, policy experts, and concerned citizens can all benefit from this timely study of common-good capitalism’s prospects.
[more]
Politics and Property Rights
The Closing of the Open Range in the Postbellum South
Shawn Everett Kantor
University of Chicago Press, 1998
After the American Civil War, agricultural reformers in the South called for an end to unrestricted grazing of livestock on unfenced land. They advocated the stock law, which required livestock owners to fence in their animals, arguing that the existing system (in which farmers built protective fences around crops) was outdated and inhibited economic growth. The reformers steadily won their battles, and by the end of the century the range was on the way to being closed.
In this original study, Kantor uses economic analysis to show that, contrary to traditional historical interpretation, this conflict was centered on anticipated benefits from fencing livestock rather than on class, cultural, or ideological differences. Kantor proves that the stock law brought economic benefits; at the same time, he analyzes why the law's adoption was hindered in many areas where it would have increased wealth. This argument illuminates the dynamics of real-world institutional change, where transactions are often costly and where some inefficient institutions persist while others give way to economic growth.
In this original study, Kantor uses economic analysis to show that, contrary to traditional historical interpretation, this conflict was centered on anticipated benefits from fencing livestock rather than on class, cultural, or ideological differences. Kantor proves that the stock law brought economic benefits; at the same time, he analyzes why the law's adoption was hindered in many areas where it would have increased wealth. This argument illuminates the dynamics of real-world institutional change, where transactions are often costly and where some inefficient institutions persist while others give way to economic growth.
[more]
Post-Communist Restitution and the Rule of Law
Csongor Kuti
Central European University Press, 2009
Eastern European societies underwent large-scale deprivations of property by the authoritarian regimes, beginning after World War II, largely ending with the last waves of the kolkhoz movement in the early 1960s. Kuti examines property reparations that took place after 1989, from the perspective of constitutional justice, the rule of law, but also from the point of view of identity politics.
[more]
Power / Knowledge / Land
Contested Ontologies of Land and Its Governance in Africa
Laura A. German
University of Michigan Press, 2022
The 2008 outcry over the “global land grab” made headlines around the world, leading to a sustained interest in the dynamics and fate of customary land among both academics and development practitioners. In Power/Knowledge/Land, author Laura German profiles the consolidation of a global knowledge regime surrounding land and its governance within international development circles in the decade following this outcry, and the growing enrollment of previously antagonistic actors within it. Drawing theoretical insights on the inseparability of power and knowledge, German reveals the dynamics of knowledge practices that have enabled the longstanding project of commodifying customary land – and the more contemporary interests in acquiring and financializing it – to be advanced and legitimated by capturing the energies of socially progressive forces. By bringing theories of change from the emergent land governance orthodoxy into dialogue with the ethnographic evidence from across the African continent and beyond, concepts masquerading as universal and self-evident truths are provincialized, and their role in commodifying customary land and entrenching colonial futurities put on display. In doing so, the volume brings wider academic debates surrounding productive forms of power into the heart of the land grab debate, while enhancing their accessibility to a wider audience.
Power/Knowledge/Land takes current scholarly debates surrounding land grabs beyond their theoretical moorings in critical agrarian studies, political economy and globalization into contemporary debates surrounding the politics of knowledge—from theories of coloniality to ontological anthropology, thereby enabling new dynamics of the phenomenon to be revealed. The book deploys a pioneering epistemology integrating deconstructionist approaches (to reveal the tactics, truth claims and ontological assumptions of global knowledge brokers), with systematic qualitative reviews and comparative study (to contrast these dominant constructs with the evidence and reveal alternative ways of knowing “land” and practicing “security” from the ethnographic literature). This helps to reveal the Western and modernist biases in the narratives that have been advanced about women, custom, and security, revealing how the coloniality of knowledge works to grease the wheels of land takings by advancing highly provincialized constructs aligned with western interests as universal truths.
[more]
Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism
The Madisonian Framework and Its Legacy
Jennifer Nedelsky
University of Chicago Press, 1990
The United States Constitution was designed to secure the rights of individuals and minorities from the tyranny of the majority—or was it? Jennifer Nedelsky's provocative study places this claim in an utterly new light, tracing its origins to the Framers' preoccupation with the protection of private property. She argues that this formative focus on property has shaped our institutions, our political system, and our very understanding of limited government.
[more]
Property, Substance, and Effect
Anthropological Essays on Persons and Things
Marilyn Strathern
HAU, 2022
In engaging essays, celebrated anthropologist Marilyn Strathern reflects on the complexities of social life.
Property, Substance, and Effect draws on Marilyn Strathern’s longstanding interest in the reification of social relations. If the world is shrinking in terms of resources and access to them, it is expanding in terms of new candidates for proprietorship. How new relations are brought into being is among the many questions about property, ownership, and knowledge that these essays bring together.
Twenty years have not diminished the interest in the book’s opening challenge: if one were inventing a method of enquiry by which to configure the complexity of social life, one might wish to invent something like the anthropologist’s ethnographic practice. A wide range of studies deliberately brings into conversation claims people make on one another through relations imagined in the form of body-substance along with the increasing visibility of conceptual or intellectual work as property. Whether one lives in Papua New Guinea or Great Britain, categories of knowledge are being dissolved and reformed at a tempo that calls for reflection—and for the kind of lateral reflection afforded through the “ethnographic effect.”
Property, Substance, and Effect draws on Marilyn Strathern’s longstanding interest in the reification of social relations. If the world is shrinking in terms of resources and access to them, it is expanding in terms of new candidates for proprietorship. How new relations are brought into being is among the many questions about property, ownership, and knowledge that these essays bring together.
Twenty years have not diminished the interest in the book’s opening challenge: if one were inventing a method of enquiry by which to configure the complexity of social life, one might wish to invent something like the anthropologist’s ethnographic practice. A wide range of studies deliberately brings into conversation claims people make on one another through relations imagined in the form of body-substance along with the increasing visibility of conceptual or intellectual work as property. Whether one lives in Papua New Guinea or Great Britain, categories of knowledge are being dissolved and reformed at a tempo that calls for reflection—and for the kind of lateral reflection afforded through the “ethnographic effect.”
[more]
Reinterpreting Property
Margaret Jane Radin
University of Chicago Press, 1994
This collection of essays by one of the country's leading property theorists revitalizes the liberal personality theory of property.
Departing from traditional libertarian and economic theories of property, Margaret Jane Radin argues that the law should take into account nonmonetary personal value attached to property—and that some things, such as bodily integrity, are so personal they should not be considered property at all. Gathered here are pieces ranging from Radin's classic early essay on property and personhood to her recent works on governmental "taking" of private property.
Margaret Jane Radin is professor of law at Stanford University. She is the author of over twenty-five articles on legal and political theory.
Departing from traditional libertarian and economic theories of property, Margaret Jane Radin argues that the law should take into account nonmonetary personal value attached to property—and that some things, such as bodily integrity, are so personal they should not be considered property at all. Gathered here are pieces ranging from Radin's classic early essay on property and personhood to her recent works on governmental "taking" of private property.
Margaret Jane Radin is professor of law at Stanford University. She is the author of over twenty-five articles on legal and political theory.
[more]
Romance and the Erotics of Property
Mass-Market Fiction for Women
Jan Cohn
Duke University Press, 1988
Romance and the Erotics of Property examines contemporary popular romance from a number of different points of view, probing for codes and subtexts that sometimes exploit and sometimes contradict its surface tale of romantic attraction, frustration, longing, and fulfillment.
Cohn argues that a full understanding of the contemporary romance requires an investigation of its literary and historical sources and analogues. Three principal sources are examined in the context of women's history in bourgeois society. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Erye, and Gone With the Wind demonstrate the development of romance fiction's themes, yet in all three the central love story is complicated by issues of property, the sign of male power. Jan Cohn further considers the development of the genre n the fictions of Harriet Lewis and May Agnes Fleming, prolific and popular American romance writers of the late nineteenth century who developed the role of the villain, thereby bringing into focus the sexual and economic struggles faced by the heroine.
Romance and the Erotics of Property sets romance fiction against a historic and literary background, arguing that contemporary romance disguises as tales of love the subversive fantasies of female appropriation and male property and power.
Cohn argues that a full understanding of the contemporary romance requires an investigation of its literary and historical sources and analogues. Three principal sources are examined in the context of women's history in bourgeois society. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Erye, and Gone With the Wind demonstrate the development of romance fiction's themes, yet in all three the central love story is complicated by issues of property, the sign of male power. Jan Cohn further considers the development of the genre n the fictions of Harriet Lewis and May Agnes Fleming, prolific and popular American romance writers of the late nineteenth century who developed the role of the villain, thereby bringing into focus the sexual and economic struggles faced by the heroine.
Romance and the Erotics of Property sets romance fiction against a historic and literary background, arguing that contemporary romance disguises as tales of love the subversive fantasies of female appropriation and male property and power.
[more]
Sentient Lands
Indigeneity, Property, and Political Imagination in Neoliberal Chile
Piergiorgio Di Giminiani
University of Arizona Press, 2018
In 1990, when Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year military dictatorship ended, democratic rule returned to Chile. Since then, Indigenous organizations have mobilized to demand restitution of their ancestral territories seized over the past 150 years.
Sentient Lands is a historically grounded ethnography of the Mapuche people’s engagement with state-run reconciliation and land-restitution efforts. Piergiorgio Di Giminiani analyzes environmental relations, property, state power, market forces, and indigeneity to illustrate how land connections are articulated, in both landscape experiences and land claims. Rather than viewing land claims as simply bureaucratic procedures imposed on local understandings and experiences of land connections, Di Giminiani reveals these processes to be disputed practices of world making.
Ancestral land formation is set in motion by the entangled principles of Indigenous and legal land ontologies, two very different and sometimes conflicting processes. Indigenous land ontologies are based on a relation between two subjects—land and people—both endowed with sentient abilities. By contrast, legal land ontologies are founded on the principles of property theory, wherein land is an object of possession that can be standardized within a regime of value. Governments also use land claims to domesticate Indigenous geographies into spatial constructs consistent with political and market configurations.
Exploring the unexpected effects on political activism and state reparation policies caused by this entanglement of Indigenous and legal land ontologies, Di Giminiani offers a new analytical angle on Indigenous land politics.
Sentient Lands is a historically grounded ethnography of the Mapuche people’s engagement with state-run reconciliation and land-restitution efforts. Piergiorgio Di Giminiani analyzes environmental relations, property, state power, market forces, and indigeneity to illustrate how land connections are articulated, in both landscape experiences and land claims. Rather than viewing land claims as simply bureaucratic procedures imposed on local understandings and experiences of land connections, Di Giminiani reveals these processes to be disputed practices of world making.
Ancestral land formation is set in motion by the entangled principles of Indigenous and legal land ontologies, two very different and sometimes conflicting processes. Indigenous land ontologies are based on a relation between two subjects—land and people—both endowed with sentient abilities. By contrast, legal land ontologies are founded on the principles of property theory, wherein land is an object of possession that can be standardized within a regime of value. Governments also use land claims to domesticate Indigenous geographies into spatial constructs consistent with political and market configurations.
Exploring the unexpected effects on political activism and state reparation policies caused by this entanglement of Indigenous and legal land ontologies, Di Giminiani offers a new analytical angle on Indigenous land politics.
[more]
State Trading in the Twenty-First Century
The World Trade Forum, Volume 1
Thomas Cottier and Petros C. Mavroidis, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 1998
The University of Michigan Press is pleased to announce the first volume in an annual series, The World Trade Forum. The Forum's members include scholars, lawyers, and government and business practitioners working in the area of international trade, law, and policy. They meet annually and discuss integration issues in international economic relations, focusing on a new theme each year.
The central topic of the first World Trade Forum is state trading. To what extent has trade liberalization, as we have experienced it over the last fifty years, affected property ownership? Contributors to the 1998 World Trade Forum explore this question, examining both state practice and the regulatory framework. Their discussions are divided into three parts: Part 1 looks at the World Trade Organization's legal framework for state trading enterprises, taking on such issues as monopolies and state enterprises, the WTO Antidumping Agreement and the economies in transition, and relationship of state trading and the Government Purchasing Act. Part 2 deals with regional experiences in state trading (for the EC, United States, Canada, Japan, China, and Russia). Part 3 examines conceptual issues such as auctions as a trade policy instrument and rule-making alternatives for entities with exclusive rights. The conclusion synthesizes the foregoing chapters in discussing the reach of modern international trade law.
Contributors are Frederick Abbott, Ichiro Araki, Christian Bach, Jacques H. J. Bourgeois, Thomas Cottier, William J. Davey, Vladimir Dbrentsov, Toni Haniotis, Bernard M. Hoekman, Gary Horlick, Henrik Horn, Robert Howse, Patrick Low, Will Martin, Mitsuo Matsushita, Petros Mavroidis, Aaditya Mattoo, Patrick Messerlin, Constantine Michalopoulos, Kristin Heim Mowry, Stilpon Nestor, Damien Neven, N. David Palmeter, Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, André Sapir, Diane P. Wood, and Werner Zdouc.
Petros Mavroidis is Professor of Law, University of Neuchatel. Thomas Cottier is Professor of Law, Institute of European and International Economic Law, University of Bern Law School.
[more]
A Thousand Pieces of Paradise
Landscape and Property in the Kickapoo Valley
Lynne Heasley
University of Wisconsin Press, 2012
A Thousand Pieces of Paradise is an ecological history of property and a cultural history of rural ecosystems set in one of the Midwest’s most historically significant regions, the Kickapoo River Valley. Whether examining the national war on soil erosion, Amish migration, a Corps of Engineers dam project, or Native American land claims, Lynne Heasley traces the history of modern American property debates. Her book holds powerful lessons for rural communities seeking to reconcile competing values about land and their place in it.
[more]
Transforming Peasants, Property and Power
The Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania, 1949–1962
Dorin Dobrincu
Central European University Press, 2009
The subject matter of the volume is part of larger research agenda on the process of land collectivization in the former communist camp, focusing on state, identity and property. The main innovation of the volume is to apply recent interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the collectivization process, asking what types of new peasant-state relations it formed and how it transformed notions of self, persons, and things (such as land). The project conceived of changes in the system of ownership as causing changes in the identity and attitude of people; similarly, it regarded the study of personal identities as essential for understanding changes in the system of ownership. This perspective is rare in the area-studies approaches to the topic.
[more]
Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Social Media’s Influence on Fashion, Ethics, and Property
Minh-Ha T. Pham
Duke University Press, 2022
In 2016, social media users in Thailand called out the Paris-based luxury fashion house Balenciaga for copying the popular Thai “rainbow bag,” using Balenciaga’s hashtags to circulate memes revealing the source of the bags’ design. In Why We Can’t Have Nice Things Minh-Ha T. Pham examines the way social media users monitor the fashion market for the appearance of knockoff fashion, design theft, and plagiarism. Tracing the history of fashion antipiracy efforts back to the 1930s, she foregrounds the work of policing that has been tacitly outsourced to social media. Despite the social media concern for ethical fashion and consumption and the good intentions behind design policing, Pham shows that it has ironically deepened forms of social and market inequality, as it relies on and reinforces racist and colonial norms and ideas about what constitutes copying and what counts as creativity. These struggles over ethical fashion and intellectual property, Pham demonstrates, constitute deeper struggles over the colonial legacies of cultural property in digital and global economies.
[more]
Wildlife as Property Owners
A New Conception of Animal Rights
Karen Bradshaw
University of Chicago Press, 2020
Humankind coexists with every other living thing. People drink the same water, breathe the same air, and share the same land as other animals. Yet, property law reflects a general assumption that only people can own land. The effects of this presumption are disastrous for wildlife and humans alike. The alarm bells ringing about biodiversity loss are growing louder, and the possibility of mass extinction is real. Anthropocentric property is a key driver of biodiversity loss, a silent killer of species worldwide. But as law and sustainability scholar Karen Bradshaw shows, if excluding animals from a legal right to own land is causing their destruction, extending the legal right to own property to wildlife may prove its salvation. Wildlife as Property Owners advocates for folding animals into our existing system of property law, giving them the opportunity to own land just as humans do—to the betterment of all.
[more]
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