Property in a time of transition: An examination of perceptions, navigations and constructions of property relations among unlawful occupiers in Johannesburg’s inner city

Urban Studies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (6) ◽  
pp. 1165-1181
Author(s):  
Jackie Dugard ◽  
Makale Ngwenya

One of the most enduring legacies of apartheid is the racialised in-access to property for the (black) majority of South Africans. The large unmet demand for accessible and affordable residential property close to work opportunities has resulted in widespread unlawful occupation of inner city buildings, which in the post-apartheid legal order has been shielded by a constitutional prohibition against arbitrary and unjust eviction. Yet, notwithstanding significant protection against eviction, in what remains a largely private property-dominated paradigm, unlawful occupation is an inherently disruptive act that pits ownership against the use/occupation of the same piece of property. Seeking to better understand the under-scrutinised social reality of such unlawful occupation of privately-owned property, we undertook qualitative research to examine how unlawful occupiers view, traverse and (re)define property-related arrangements. Coming from legal and built environment backgrounds respectively, we were particularly interested to understand the extent to which the legal limbo of unlawful occupation has given rise to a rejection of the hegemony of private property ownership and the construction of an alternative urban property rights consciousness among unlawful occupiers. Our research indicates that, although residents in Johannesburg’s inner city have found ways to deal with their state of unlawful occupation, the occupied spaces currently more accurately reflect a survivalist struggle in a mainstream property ownership-dominated reality than the assertion of a new urban property regime, with occupiers yearning for greater, rather than less, formality and legal authority.

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (94) ◽  
pp. 127-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Stark

We should not be surprised that reorganization in Eastern Europe is yielding new property forms that are neither statist nor private. The economies of East Central Europe are evolving in forms that are neither state capitalist nor market socialist. These are mixed economies not because there are state-owned firms and privately owned firms but because the typical firm is itself a combination of public and private property relations. What we find are new forms of property in which the properties of private and public are dissolved, interwoven, and recombined. Property in East European capitalism in recombinant property.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Christopher Strunk ◽  
Ursula Lang

For the most part, research and policymaking on urban gardening have focused on community gardens, whether in parks, vacant lots, or other public land. This emphasis, while important for many Midwestern cities, can obscure the significance of privately owned land such as front yard and back yard and their crucial connections with gardening on public land. In this case study, we examine how policies and practices related to gardening and the management of green space in two Midwestern cities exceed narrow visions of urban agriculture. The article explores the cultivation of vacant lot gardens and private yards as two modes of property in similar Midwestern contexts and argues that the management of green space is about more than urban agriculture. Instead, we show how urban gardening occurs across public/private property distinctions and involves a broader set of actors than those typically included in sustainability policies. Gardening also provides a key set of connections through which neighbors understand and practice sustainability in Midwestern cities.


Polar Record ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol J. Brown-Leonardi

ABSTRACTThe Deh Cho Dene have been negotiating territorial land since early European settlement. This paper argues that the changing needs of Deh Cho Dene society has changed their concept of property and this transformation has evolved with a responsibility to conserve cultural practice and ecological balance in Deh Cho Dene territorial lands. The article considers how the changing need of European society addresses property and ownership in the context of basic human rights and consumer interests. It uses the theories of Macpherson, Locke, and Marx to construct a model to understand the property relations that exist in the Deh Cho Dene region. Accordingly, the paper addresses oral narratives to give historical insight into the relations between neighbouring tribal groups and their understanding of territorial boundaries. An account of present day negotiations highlights the various initiatives taken to protect traditional interests and uphold historical claim to the territory. The negotiation of joint ventures and property ownership has evolved with concerns over ecological sustainability and the protection of a subsistence lifestyle, which is critical for the social and economic interests of Deh Cho Dene culture, and is closely connected to the land.


2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 74-80
Author(s):  
Judith Erasmus

This paper focuses on Ponte City, a high rise residential tower within the inner city of Johannesburg, South Africa - the highest of its kind in the southern hemisphere. This equally visually and socially notorious cylindrical building has since its erection in the 1970's become an icon and simulacrum of Johannesburg city life. It is located on the border of the suburb of Hillbrow, a restless transcendental suburb, known for its well mixed population of locals and migrant non South Africans, especially from other African countries. The inner city suburbs of Hillbrow and surround is furthermore notorious for being overcrowded and dangerous, with crime and xenophobia reaching peak statistics within the country. Famous for its peculiar shape and size, and somehow the epitome of what has and is happening in these areas, are Ponte City. It has become the first point of arrival for thousands of migrants from the rest of Africa and functions as a beehive of tangible and non-tangible systems and myths. Although it primarily provides a big concentration of homes for many, its purpose and influence has always been about something bigger - a reference to visual and structural feat, to social elitism, to African migration, and to urban legend of both horror and delight. The paper investigates the significance of Ponte as built form within this milieu of fear and transition. The building is seen as an urban body that has moved beyond the borders of its physical existence. It is described how it functions and exercises influence in the collective imaginations of its users and spectators. It also looks into how it asserts traditional definition and the significance of volatility in such inner-city environments. Experimental theories of homelessness, concept cities and cities with people as infrastructure are investigated and utilized in order to grasp a new understanding of the building within this unique milieu.


Author(s):  
Vugar Nazarov ◽  
◽  
Jamal Hajiyev ◽  
Vasif Ahadov ◽  
◽  
...  

Local and foreign scientists are now paying growing attention to various issues of property and the philosophical and ethical, political, economic, institutional, social, psychological, and other aspects of its formation, taking into account the requirements of large-scale transformation, which primarily concern post-industrial areas of social development. In consequence, as modern studies rightfully point out, considering property relations, two general restrictions should be taken into account: this is an attempt to explain the absoluteness of their roles, the presence and content of all aspects of socio-economic relations by property relations; and the denial of the role of property as one of the most important factors determining the direction of social development in the present and future.This situation forces a new look at the economic policy of the state in this area, because any financial and monetary measures taken by the government will be doomed to failure if their implementation will be without interaction with the mechanisms of the private property system. The article defines the entrepreneurial sector of the region, its interaction with the institutions of the market system operating in all sectors and spheres of the region's economy, and also shows the influence of the development of property relations on the institutions of entrepreneurship.


2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-364
Author(s):  
Fiona Macmillan

Starting from an argument about the relationship between cultural heritage and national and/or community identity, this article considers the different ways in which both the international law regime for the protection of cultural heritage and the international intellectual property regime tend to appropriate cultural heritage. The article argues that, in the postcolonial context, both these forms of appropriation continue to interfere with the demands for justice and for the recognition of historical wrongs made both by indigenous peoples and by many developing countries. At the same time, the article suggests that these claims are undermined by the misappropriation of the postcolonial discourse with respect to restitution of cultural heritage, particularly in the intra-European context. The article advocates the need for a regime for the protection of cultural heritage that is strong enough to resist its private appropriation through the use of intellectual property rights and nuanced enough to recognise significant differences in the political context of local and national claims to cultural heritage.


Author(s):  
Ekaterina Pravilova

This chapter traces the history of property relations in Russia. It examines how Russian rulers came to respect private property as a bulwark of autocracy and what this respect meant for property in the context of Russian monarchal rule. Topics covered include the reign of Catherine the Great and the invention of absolute private domain; the issue of expropriation; the scope and the legal status of state possessions; and initial attempts to introduce the notion of “public property,” which focused on Russia's natural treasures, such as the forests granted by Catherine the Great into the unlimited ownership of the nobles.


Author(s):  
Regine A. Spector

This chapter asks how we can best study the economic dynamism of Kyrgyzstan’s bazaars, which are crucial pillars of the country’s economy. In contrast to perspectives that view them through the lens of neoliberal economic policies, state collapse and socioeconomic dispossession, or mafia rule, the chapter offers an alternative. It argues that within the context of new private property relations that distinguish traders, bazaar owners, and state officials, those who work at bazaars adapt pre-existing institutions and organizational forms to govern the bazaar, and in this way create islands of order that allow market interactions to flourish. The chapter discusses the book’s methodology and implications for literatures on ideas, institutions, and syncretism, and for studies of political economy and development.


Hegel's Value ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 105-149
Author(s):  
Dean Moyar

This chapter is a reading of “Abstract Right” that demonstrates the centrality of value and inference to the account. Hegel’s account unfolds private property as the immediate expression of the free will in the external world. When the argument turns toward the use of property, Hegel’s account of value comes to the fore as the universality of property ownership that is implicit in the right to use what one owns. While dealt with only briefly in the published Philosophy of Right, value gets a much more extensive treatment in the 1824–1825 lectures, where it becomes the main concept for understanding the process and result of the alienation of property. The chapter shows that the transition from alienation to contract brings Hegel’s account of mutual recognition to the fore along with an inferential equivalence form of value. Equivalence of value is a central dimension of punishment, but that equivalence can be secured only with the transition to the moral will.


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