Property Rights from Below: Commodification of Land and the Counter-Movement (Routledge Complex Real Property Rights Series)

by OlivierDeSchutter (Editor), Balakrishnan Rajagopal (Editor)

• New

  Hardcover
  2019

  $137.27

  Recent years have seen a globalization of property rights as the Western conception of property rights over land has extended across the world. As formerly community-owned land and natural resources are privatized and titling schemes proliferate, Property Rights from Below questions the trend towards treating land as a commodity and explores alternatives to the Western model.

  Using a range of examples from around the world, the contributors argue that as we enter an era of resource scarcity and as competition for land and associated natural resources increases, purchasing power cannot become the sole criterion for land allocation, and the law of supply and demand in increasingly financialized markets cannot become the sole metric through which the value of land is determined. Property Rights from Below demonstrates that alternatives to this model often emerge from social initiatives supported by local communities, and that there is an urgent need for a broader political imagination when it comes to land governance.

  This innovative cross-disciplinary perspective on the pressing problems surrounding global property rights will be exceedingly valuable to academics, students and professionals with an interest in property law, development economics and land governance.