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 five locations in Germany: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Sprecher*innenhochschule), Universität Erfurt, Freie Universität BerlinCarl 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

New publication!

Carsten Herrmann-Pillath and Qian Zhao (C01) have published a new book. The anthology East Asian Ethical Life and Socio-Economic Transformation in the Twenty-First Century. The Ethical Sources of the Entrepreneurial Renewal of Companies and Communities looks at ethical culture in East Asia, examines the impact it has had on economic and social transformation, and explores what impact it might have on solving current problems. It also looks at cooperative enterprises and corporate social responsibility.

Call for Papers

For the conference "Gender, Nature and Ecology. Articulating the political-intellectual traditions of French and German ecofeminism in a global perspective" which is co-organized by Susanne Lettow (C02), contributions are sought. The conference will take place from October 7 to 8, 2024 in Paris and Anna Saave (University of Freiburg), former member of the CRC, will give a keynote speech. The PDF with more information is available here.

The SFB in the media

Petra Gümplová (JRT01) was interviewed by the Goethe-Institut about the use of natural resources. In the interview, she describes how the current system of ownership of natural resources developed and why it is problematic. Finally, she gives an outlook on alternative concepts for the management of natural resources.

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Keynote by Hartmut Rosa "Dinge ent-sorgen. Wie der Kapitalismus das Ende des Privateigentums an Konsumgütern erzwingt"

Hartmut Rosa will give a public lecture on the disposal of our property in turbo-capitalism. It will take place on June 27 at 7 p.m. at the Town Hall of Erfurt. The lecture can also be attended online via livestream.

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Two new publications in the book series "Structural Change of Property"!

Two new books will be published in the SFB series on June 19: Nach dem Privateigentum? by Silke van Dyk, Tilman Reitz and Hartmut Rosa and Leben auf Kredit by Felix Krämer.

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Events

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Volkshaus; Jena

International Annual Conference "Beyond (Private) Property"

At the conference in Jena, we will discuss different forms of ownership that cannot be reduced to private property - which is dominant in modern societies - and ask about possibilities for organizing social relations in a non-property form or beyond private property.

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Friedrich-Schiller-Universität; Jena

Workshop: Changing property and gender relations

<meta charset="UTF-8">The workshop is organized by B06 "Property inequalities in the private sphere" (Agnieszka Althaber, Kathrin Leuze, Robin Saalfeld, Sylka Scholz). The content of the workshop is to gather diverse findings on property and gender relations from the SFB/Transregio projects and collectively examine how these insights can be synthesized into broader theses about the reciprocal relationships between property and gender. 

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Universität Erfurt; Erfurt

Workshop: From Contested Ownership to (In)Voluntary Returns: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Postcolonial Fight for Restitution and Repatriation

The interdisciplinary workshop aims to reassess the fight for repatriation and restitution by bringing together questions of ownership and voluntariness that are addressed in the Collaborative Research Center “Structural Change of Property” (Universities Erfurt and Jena) and the DFG-Research Group “Voluntariness” (Universities of Erfurt, Jena and Oldenburg). Focusing on questions of ownership, the workshop will examine how activists have tried to contest Western notions of ownership in the debates on repatriation and restitution and how Western museums and collection have reacted towards these efforts. The workshop will take place with our Mercator Fellow Flower Manase.