Publication series 'Structural change of property'
About the series
Property is a largely unquestioned institutional basis of the current world and economic order. At the same time, in the early 21st century, property is increasingly being challenged in almost all its forms and manifestations and is more politically contested than ever before. It has become questionable not only because the forced global enforcement of private property following the collapse of state socialism at the end of the 20th century has led to a serious increase in inequality in the distribution of property and wealth, but also because the tried and tested forms of ownership have now become dysfunctional in many areas for ecological sustainability and even for economic growth. As a result, the meaning of what it means to be the owner of something (e.g. a flat, a forest, a share of stock) has been thrown into flux. However, it has also become questionable due to new technical developments, especially digitalisation processes: Scarce material goods now seem to be replaced by things that can be shared and accessed indefinitely, which raises entirely new questions of intellectual property, copyright and patent rights, etc. Finally, what is suitable for being organised as property is also politically and culturally contested: works of art? Human organs? DNA sequences? Raw materials? Algorithms? Forests? Water? Oceans? Asteroids? What are the alternatives to private property?
This publication series is the result of the Collaborative Research Centre 294, 'Structural Change of Property', funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) with a focus on the universities of Jena and Erfurt. It is dedicated to systematic, interdisciplinary research into the subject area outlined above and seeks to bring together outstanding academic work on the history, present and future of property.
Title: Pflicht und Freiheit des Erblassers. Pflichtteil und Wahnsinnsfiktion im klassischen römischen Erbrecht.
Author: Jan Dirk Harke
May 2023
About the book
The right to a compulsory portion is still a central component of inheritance law today. It ensures that the closest relatives of a deceased person receive a minimum share of their estate. Jan Dirk Harke traces how this right gradually asserted itself against an initially unlimited freedom of testation in Roman property law: in order to fulfil the requirement of family responsibility, the closest relatives of a testator were given the opportunity to contest a will that excluded them from the inheritance as being contrary to their duties. However, this was only possible under the pretext that the testator was not of sound mind when the will was made. This demonstrates the great importance of testamentary freedom for ancient society.
Title: Nach dem Privateigentum? Güter, Infrastrukturen und Weltverhältnisse im Kapitalismus des 21. Jahrhunderts.
Authors: Silke van Dyk, Tilman Reitz, Hartmut Rosa.
June 2024
About the book
Political conflicts over the distribution of property, precarious infrastructures, technological developments and economic and ecological crises suggest a structural change in property in the 21st century. The contributions in this volume analyse this change from a sociological perspective. They focus in particular on non-industrial goods - from knowledge and information to land and property - as well as collective contributions and infrastructures that increasingly determine capitalist economies. Although private property is more powerful than ever after decades of deregulation and concentration, it is facing a serious crisis and is being supplemented by new orders of access and division, which are also shifting individual and collective world relations.
Title: Leben auf Kredit. Menschen, Macht und Schulden in den USA vom Ende der Sklaverei bis in die Gegenwart.
Author: Felix Krämer
June 2024
About the book
Debt characterises the lives of millions of people in the USA. Felix Krämer sets out in search of their stories from 1865 to the present day. It becomes clear that Black Americans in particular, but also women, workers and migrants, were repeatedly exposed to higher credit risks or unbearable conditions. Such differences are addressed with the term "debt difference". The book demonstrates this through various forms of debt such as the system of sharecropping after the end of slavery, images of loan sharks or property debt and traces how student debt and credit card practices brought neoliberalism into people's everyday experiences. With its focus on precarisation through debt, the book uncovers a production line of the "wealth gap" in the USA and thus fills a gap in the new history of capitalism.
Title: Relating to Landed Property
Edited by Sofia Bianchi Mancini, Helen A. Gibson, Dirk Schuck, Markus Vinzent
September 2024
About the book
How is space conceptualised and constituted through historical and religious claims to land ownership? How is dispossession enacted and theorised in changing property regimes? The contributions in this volume engage with postcolonial critiques of land tenure and provide a much-needed contextualisation of the ways in which histories of divine possession, empire, settler colonialism, slavery and the dispossession of indigenous peoples inform contemporary practices of land tenure. Bringing together perspectives from the fields of religious studies, history, philosophy, legal history, economics and sociology, this book makes an important contribution to linking theory and practice in the critique of contemporary property regimes in Europe and North America; it also provides methodological suggestions for grounding theoretical discussions in a nuanced understanding of the past.