Giving up 'Possession': Towards a 21st Century Definition of Property

Property rights are fundamental to how we relate to each other and to the world. However, political economy has yet to respond to changes in the theory of property recently developed by legal scholars and development practitioners as a response to the reality of property practices in their respective fields. My research investigates the implications of replacing the old understanding of property as 'possession' with this new conception of property as 'control' of access to resources. This change has important consequences for theories which assume, for example, that market transactions are completely private, that all things are either owned or unowned, and that societies are structured by the relation between property-owning and dispossessed classes. In short, my research examines the consequences for political economy of giving up the conception of property rights as 'possession' - as legal theorists and development practitioners have already begun to do.