CFP San Francisco AAG: Transformations of property and land in the contemporary political economy.
Organizers: James DeFilippis, Joseph Pierce, and Deborah Martin
Land and, its politically constructed form, property, have always been central components of the capitalist political economy. While historically this was predominantly in the form of being a “factor of production” that role has been joined in the last few decades by land being a financialized asset. But the meanings, nature, and character of land and property have always been constructed, and such constructions, while sometimes seeming permanent, have always been contested.
In this session we will be exploring the ways in which alternative and oppositional forms of land and property are being constructed in the contemporary political economy. Such transformations of land and property are an ongoing endeavor and their political implications and meanings are themselves unfixed and dynamic. Papers exploring these issues could focus on issues in the United States, about:
- Squatting
- Community Land Trusts
- Limited-equity cooperatives and other forms of shared equity housing
- Rural land reform movements
- The “commons” in our time
- Political contestations in and to property or land “regularization”
Please send proposed paper titles and abstracts (250 words or fewer) to demartin@clarku.edu by Oct 24, 2015.