4th International Symposium Properties in Transformation – Law, Politics and Ecology of Changes in Properties Regimes

4th International Symposium Properties in Transformation – Law, Politics and Ecology of Changes in Properties Regimes

4-5 December, 2023

CEBRAP – Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning – São Paulo, Brazil

Submit your abstract until November 10, 2023

See the complete Call for Papers for more information.

Properties and property rights/duties are constitutive of economic, social and ecological relations, both locally and on a multi-scalar level. In particular, this is the case of the notion of property as exclusion that is adopted in most contemporary legal systems and that is the intellectual and historical rooted in Western legal traditions and the colonial endeavor.

According to this conception, property is often conceived and described as something stable, monolithic and not influenced by historical and contextual circumstances. Yet, throughout time and places there has been the emergence of multiple conceptions of what is and what is not property (including the absence of the concept of property in some languages and legal experiences), along with a series of challenges, attacks and attempts to redefine or reject the concept in favor of new conceptions. This is even more evident at the time of climate emergency and widespread socio-ecological inequalities, two circumstances that require a structural reconsideration of properties as the legal basis of society.

However, in the legal field property is rarely defined and is discussed predominantly in formal and static terms that tend to sacralize it, thus ignoring its genealogy, metamorphosis and plastic nature. Therefore, the changes and transformations of properties, along with the underlying processes and their effects, deserve the adoption and development of innovative and inter-disciplinary approaches that combine historical, political-economic, political ecology, institutional and related factors to public policies, as well as the roles played by institutions and legal processes.

For the 4th Symposium, we welcome with particular interest contributions that address the political economy and political ecology of property regimes’ transformations from a legal perspective, i.e. papers that shed light on the roles of legal and non-legal processes in the creation and imagination of alternatives, or on the interconnections between property and the unfolding ecological crises, but are also sharing and promoting just and innovative forms of organizing the relationships between people and between people, society and the environment

Although property is often associated with law and lawyers, the Symposium wants to create the space for multi-disciplinary conversations, so we welcome contributions representing a variety of methodological approaches. Despite the original focus on Brazil, we seek to broaden the network of researchers, engaged professionals and activists who study, work and engage with properties, society and environment. We thus welcome contributors from around the world, and will be particularly glad to receive contributions concerning experiences and cases in other regions of the Global South.

Co-Organizers:

Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP)
Faculdade de Direito da USP – Grupo Direito e Políticas Públicas (GDPP)
Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp)
University of Antwerp (EPICC Project)

Submission of proposals:

Expanded abstracts of up to 1,000 words should be submitted by November, 10, 2023, by electronic address propertiesintransformation@gmail.com, with the subject “Properties in Transformation 2023: expanded summary – YOUR SURNAME IN CAPITAL LETTERS”.

There is no thematic restriction, but we would be glad to receive papers on the following subjects, areas and approaches:

(1) Properties, people and the planet: properties and non-properties and their connections with notions and practices of traditional, indigenous, formal/informal communities; property and recognition; new legal regimes for exploitation; property, ecology and the construction/definition of the planet/environment; properties and negative/positive externalities; intellectual property and natural/cultural heritage.

(2) Properties and property rights behind the ‘technological revolution’ and the ‘gig-economy’: property of the network, property of the minerals that enable the existence of state-of-the-art technology, intellectual property over platforms, data and technologies, new forms of immaterial property, new legal challenges of ownership in the sharing economy.

(3) Property, concentration of economic power and democracy: how the regulation of property relates to the concentration of economic power in the last decades; the relationship between property, concentration of economic power and crisis of democracy.

(4) Properties as politics: occupations of land, buildings and schools; property, democracy and political mobilization, social function of property, usucapio, disputes of property, unemployment, dispossession, agrarian reform, public/private space, nationalization, privatization.

(5) Properties as/versus commons: what is the relationship between commons, commoning and property?; are commons owned or against ownership?; property of maritime areas and maritime resources, sustainable and predatory exploitation, tragedy of the commons, forms and instruments of sharing, regulatory challenges, cooperative regimes, pasture funds.

(6) Properties of the State/the State as properties: normative and regulatory regimes of property, property as political and economic asset, public goods, property and public policies, privatization, nationalization, historical patrimony, legal reforms of the property, Eminent domain.

(7) History and genealogies of contemporary notions of properties: property in the history, property and institutional arrangements, forms and functions of property regimes.

(8) Property, capitalism and post-capitalist political economy: property and financialization of society, fintechs, accumulation and (mis)distribution, property right and economic development, progressive taxation, property, interest, debt, indebtedness; what role for property rights in de-growth scenarios?

(9) Criminal law and property: legality/lawlessness, criminalization, legal protection of property, creditor, social conflict and property, crimes against property.

(10)Digital platforms and property changes: digital platforms and their economic and political powers, effects on property and regulatory regimes

(11) Scholarship and methods in LPE: property as a central category in law and political economy studies, methodological discussion on how to do research on law and political economy of property changes.

(12) Property as logistic – logistic as property: what can property theory tell us about the consolidation and expansion of logistic? Can we talk about logistic without talking about property? How is property changing or adapted to the needs of logistic, including via its financialization?

See the complete Call for Papers for more information.