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Turner, Bertram --- "The anthropology of property" [2017] ELECD 204; in Graziadei, Michele; Smith, Lionel (eds), "Comparative Property Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 26

Book Title: Comparative Property Law

Editor(s): Graziadei, Michele; Smith, Lionel

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848447578

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: The anthropology of property

Author(s): Turner, Bertram

Number of pages: 23

Abstract/Description:

From an anthropological perspective, property refers to the many ways in which rights and obligations, privileges and restrictions govern the dealings of humans with regard to resources and objects of value. The value of objects is qualified according to socio-cultural perspectives. In that sense, property is socially conditioned in all societies – its value may remain constant, increase or decrease depending on the social relations inherent in it. Property can also generate more property. What appears desirable to be held as property in one society may appear without value in another. Moreover, humans may regard material and immaterial property as cognitively and intellectually connected with its owner or as related to an individual personality. The political status of an individual, full rights of citizenry, or an individual’s legal capacity may depend on property. Moreover, as individual valorization can only take place in a societal context, i.e., with respect to others, anthropologists look at property as constitutive of personhood. In addition, symbolic aspects or ascriptions of specific qualities (e.g., spiritual characteristics) may endow items with meaning that make them desirable as property. Thus the concept embodies and brings together materiality, technology and sets of knowledge – what we might call the more purely economic factors – with intellectual, spiritual, symbolic and ideological dimensions (Hann, 1998; Moore, 2005; von Benda-Beckmann et al., 2006). Property appears as a human universal and involves more than the relationship between people and valuables (Hann, 1998). It is about relationships among people relative to goods and valuables.