(Source: Oxford University Press)
Oxford
University Press has published “Legalism: Property and Ownership”
CONTENT
In this volume,
ownership is defined as the simple fact of being able to describe something as
'mine' or 'yours', and property is distinguished as the discursive field which
allows the articulation of attendant rights, relationships, and obligations.
Property is often articulated through legalism as a way of thinking that
appeals to rules and to generalizing concepts as a way of understanding,
responding to, and managing the world around one. An Aristotelian perspective
suggests that ownership is the natural state of things and a prerequisite of a
true sense of self. An alternative perspective from legal theory puts law at
the heart of the origins of property. However, both these points of view are
problematic in a wider context, the latter because it rests heavily on Roman
law. Anthropological and historical studies enable us to interrogate these
assumptions.
The articles
here, ranging from Roman provinces to modern-day piracy in Somalia, address
questions such as: How are legal property regimes intertwined with economic,
moral-ethical, and political prerogatives? How far do the assumptions of the
western philosophical tradition explain property and ownership in other
societies? Is the 'bundle of rights' a useful way to think about property? How
does legalism negotiate property relationships and interests between
communities and individuals? How does the legalism of property respond to the
temporalities and materialities of the objects owned? How are property regimes
managed by states, and what kinds of conflicts are thus generated?
Property and
ownership cannot be reduced to natural rights, nor do they straightforwardly
reflect power relations: the rules through which property is articulated tend
to be conceptually subtle. As the fourth volume in the Legalism series, this
collection draws on common themes that run throughout the first three
volumes: Legalism: Anthropology and History, Legalism:
Community and Justice, and Legalism: Rules and Categories consolidating
them in a framework that suggests a new approach to legal concepts.
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
Introduction -
Property and Ownership: an Overview, Georgy Kantor, Tom Lambert , and Hannah
Skoda
1. Cows and the
Shariah in the Abeche Customary Court (eastern Chad), Judith Scheele
2. Property in
Land in Roman Provinces, Georgy Kantor
3. Property and
Possession in Medieval Celtic Societies, T.M. Charles-Edwards
4. The Afterlife
of Property: Affect, Time, Value, Matthew Erie
5. Jurisdiction
as Property in England, 900-1100, Tom Lambert
6. 'Everything
Belongs to God': Sayyid Qutb's Theory of Property and Social Justice, Walter
Rech
7. A Sea of
Profit: Making Property in the Western Indian Ocean, Jatin Dua
8. Fish as
Property on the Small Aral Sea, Kazakhstan, William Wheeler
9. People as
Property in Medieval Dubrovnik, Hannah Skoda
More information
on the website
of Oxford University Press
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