The SFB short film:

About property in transition and the work of the SFB.

This film is the work of Catharina Göldner and Katharina Hamann.

The members of the Collaborative Research Centre in summer 2023

Image: Marlen van den Ecker

Welcome to the website of the Collaborative Research Centre TRR 294 "Structural Change of Property"!

The Collaborative Research Centre pursues the goal of investigating the fundamental structural change of property that could be observed at the latest since 1989. The Collaborative Research Centre contains a total of 23 subprojects at eight locations in Germany: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Sprecher*innenhochschule), Universität Erfurt, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, Leibniz-Institute for Research on Society and Space, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Technische Universität Darmstadt.

While private property has gained in importance worldwide since 1989 under conditions of increasing concentration and deregulation, the resulting property system has proved to be both crisis-prone and highly controversial in the face of new economic, political and technological challenges. It isn't challenged only by the global financial and economic crises, but also by political conflicts over the appropriation, distribution and containment of private property, as well as by the dynamics of the knowledge and bio-economies, which are linked to alternative concepts of common property, shared use and free access to resources.

News

Annual Conference "Problematic Objects of Property": Registration now open

From November 4-6, our annual conference will take place in Jena. Everyone is welcome. Admission is free.

See here for the program and registration

New issue of our newsletter

Another issue of our newsletter was published at the end of June. As always, it provides an overview of the most important current events, publications and media coverage relating to the SFB. You can still subscribe to the newsletter here. 

To the newsletter

Tilo Wesche at jung & naiv

As a guest on the well-known talk show "jung&naiv", Tilo Wesche talks not only about interesting milestones in his life, but discusses property and colonialism, current issues surrounding private property, and the rights of nature. His idea: Nature should be granted property rights over itself. 

To the video

New Dossier: Property, Media and the Public Sphere

The newly published dossier “Property, Media, and the Public Sphere” examines the structural transformation of property and the public sphere. The transformation of property relations undeniably has profound consequences for the public sphere and, by extension, for the functioning of democracy. Yet public sphere theory — including its critical variants — has largely neglected the question of property. With the texts collected here, the new dossier seeks to counter this neglect of property. 

Read the Dossier

New blog post online!

In his blog post ‘Im Dickicht der Skripte: Horizontale und vertikale Strukturen des Eigentums’, which has just been published, Veit Braun of the University of Augsburg seeks to clarify the complex forms and regimes of ownership when it comes to the ownership of plants. Amidst the complex intertwining of very different property rights, one thing becomes clear: “Apparently, property is not only the obvious answer to all manner of problems, but also the only conceivable one; even to those problems it itself creates.”

 

To the blog post

New Dossier: China's Property System in Transition

The newly published dossier "China's Property System in Transition: Tradition, Transformation, and the Realignment of Global Power Dynamics" brings together contributions from the SFB that illustrate how property in China is being reorganized amid profound social transformations, global shifts in power, and ecological crises. The dossier approaches the topic from three perspectives: property as a social practice, the transformation of the property order, and the geopolitical reorganization of property. 

 

Read the Dossier

Blood Oil: Fossil Curse and Political Violence

In an article for the Czech magazine kapitál, Petra Gümplová writes about the concept of “blood oil”: countries rich in natural resources are often ruled by autocratic regimes. As a result, local populations are excluded from the wealth generated by these resources. Instead, as the example of Russia shows, this wealth is used to finance wars abroad and authoritarian repression at home.

To the article
To the News archive...

Events

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Rosensäle; Jena

International Annual Conference "Problematic Objects of Property – Form, Materiality, Politics"

At the conference in Jena, we will discuss tensions that arise in the formatting of property objects, result from their specificity and are at stake in political disputes.

read more...
To the complete schedule of dates...

An overview of the most important events of the Collaborative Research Center is available here.