Discourses of land allocation and natural property rights: Land entrepreneurialism and informal settlements in Bogotá, Colombia

Earlier chapters of this book found that the Hobbesian hypothesis is false; the Lockean proviso is unfulfilled; contemporary states and property rights systems fail to meet the standard that social contract and natural property rights theories require for their justification. This chapter assesses the implications of those findings for the two theories. Section 1 argues that, whether contractarians accept or reject these findings, they need to clarify their argument to remove equivocation. Section 2 invites efforts to refute this book’s empirical findings. Section 3 discusses a response open only to property rights theorists: concede this book’s empirical findings and blame government failure. Section 4 considers the argument that this book misidentifies the state of nature. Section 5 considers a “bracketing strategy,” which admits that observed stateless societies fit the definition of the state of nature, but argues that they are not the relevant forms of statelessness today. Section 6 discusses the implications of accepting both the truth and relevance of the book’s findings, concluding that the best response is to fulfil the Lockean proviso by taking action to improve the lives of disadvantaged people.

Download Full-text

Making Property in Kyrgyzstan: Bishkek’s Urban Periphery as Redistributive Space

Central Asian Affairs ◽

10.1163/22142290-00402004 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 173-196 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Craig Hatcher

Keyword(s):

Property Rights ◽

Private Property ◽

Informal Settlements ◽

The Political ◽

Land Claims ◽

Unequal Distribution ◽

Political Unrest ◽

Urban Periphery ◽

Moral Claims ◽

The City

This article explores urban land claims made by residents living in Bishkek’s informal settlements (novostroikas) located on the edge of the city. By examining the growth of the urban periphery alongside shifts in property rights enacted through privatization programs, Bishkek’s novostroikas are a grassroots attempt to correct previous inequitable distributions of private property. The political unrest of the Tulip Revolution in 2005 and the violent events of 2010 are taken as decisive moments to challenge this unequal distribution. The article examines how the residents of novostroikas enact collective and moral claims over land that demonstrate an understanding of private property to be contextual, overlapping, and heterogeneous, rather than singular and predetermined.

Download Full-text

Social capital and perceived tenure security of informal housing: Evidence from Beijing, China

Urban Studies ◽

10.1177/00420980211033085 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 004209802110330

Author(s):

Mengzhu Zhang

Keyword(s):

Social Capital ◽

Property Rights ◽

Low Income ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Informal Settlement ◽

Rapid Development ◽

Informal Settlements ◽

Psychological Explanation ◽

Urban China ◽

Tenure Security

Perceived tenure security is recognised to affect the socioeconomic behaviours and wellbeing of informal settlement dwellers. The provision of perceived tenure security is centred on the developmental agenda as a key policy alternative of tenure legalisation. Despite the consensus about its importance, the reason perceived tenure security is different amongst dwellers remains unclear. To fill this gap, we introduce social capital theory to understand the formation of and disparity in perceived tenure security. The hypotheses are that dwellers living in informal settlements with higher collective social capital and having higher individual social capital tend to feel more secure on their tenure because of higher backing power attained to deter the threats of eviction. We examine the hypotheses using a structural equation model approach to a dataset collected from three small property rights housing communities, which are emerging informal settlements in urban China. Modelling results support our hypotheses and suggest that female, low-income and migrant dwellers tend to feel less secure on their tenure because of the lack of social capital to deter the threats to their tenure. This study contributes to a new sociological explanation for the disparity in perceived tenure security other than the established psychological explanation. Empirically, this study contributes to the understanding of the rapid development of small property rights housing developments in China from the perspective of how dwellers develop security on informal tenure.

Download Full-text