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Digitized Space as Property
Published in Jannice Käll, Posthuman Property and Law, 2023
Posthumanist theory suggests a critical account of power, based both in how matter comes to matter in general (Barad 2007), and advanced capitalism’s role in these processes. As such this is a way of articulating both the capacities vested in matter to exist in certain ways, as well as in relation to other matter. Consequently, one can say that it is a way to view matter as both being performative in itself and in relation. Attending to the materiality of digital spaces in a posthuman sense, it becomes possible to highlight for example how the liquidity of data-driven spaces adds a layer of iterability and customization to things, coding part–whole belongings in increasingly different ways between individuals. This translates well to the perspectives in property theory that advances a way of considering property as a relational form of power, and a power over relations, stretching beyond the human–thing divide. From the perspective of attending to entangled aspects of digital technologies and humans, property perspectives that advance the question of belonging is therefore a fruitful way forward.
Differences and divergences
Published in Peter J. S. Jones, Governing Marine Protected Areas, 2014
Land tends to be owned by specific parties such as individual people or groups of people, commercial companies (private property rights) or the government (state property rights). Some terrestrial areas are subject to community property rights, whereby local people have the rights to live on and use the land, or common property rights, whereby people have rights of access to undertake certain extractive and non-extractive uses under customary and/or legal common property rights, but most land is subject to private or state property rights. Land is often also leased or rented to certain people for certain uses and can be sold from one party to another. Whilst the owners or occupiers of land may not have complete legal autonomy over how the land is managed, they generally do have the rights to determine who can use the land and in what ways such land can be used. Land owners may be subject to state controlled restrictions for biodiversity conservation purposes within terrestrial protected areas, but land areas are generally subject to relatively well-defined rights of access and use. This makes it relatively straightforward for such restrictions to be implemented, as the state can define the owners, leasees and people with rights to use a given land area, whose activities it needs to regulate, with relative ease.
Water markets
Published in Alistair Rieu-Clarke, Andrew Allan, Sarah Hendry, Routledge Handbook of Water Law and Policy, 2017
Property rights are necessary in order for markets to bring economic efficiency (Perman et al. 1999, p. 8). In order to trade, a buyer has to have the right to use an asset. Economists maintain that only well-defined property rights avoid externalities, allowing for economic efficiency (Carlton and Perloff 2000, p. 83). According to Casado-Pérez (2015), governments should clearly define property rights on water, with their consequent apportionment quota – to be respected even during drought, security and tradability.22 Colby and Bush suggest four requirements necessary for property rights in water markets:Completely specified and enforced so that all individuals know the privileges and restrictions associated with holding a water right and the penalties for their violation;Exclusive so that benefit and costs associated with water use and transfer decisions accrue to the decision makers (buyers, sellers, right holders), not third parties;Comprehensive so that all attributes and uses of water that generate value can be represented by water rights, including water quality, instream flow levels and so on; andTransferable so that water rights holders may transfer rights in response to an attractive offer and water resources can gravitate to their highest value uses.[1987, p. 23]
Protection through property: from private to river-held rights
Published in Water International, 2019
Anne De Vries-Stotijn, Ilon Van Ham, Kees Bastmeijer
Against this backdrop, this article explores the potential of private property rights in the Netherlands and New Zealand as additional legal instruments to protect bodies of water, with special attention to rivers. Property rights are rights or duties which relate to the possession or use of an object (e.g., ownership and easement rights).1 Property rights can, within certain limits, be used to protect the environment. For example, a farmer may refrain from using parts of his land adjoining a river to allow natural aquatic wildlife to return. He may even bind subsequent owners to this non-use. However, the scope of this article goes beyond the conventional approaches in property law and includes an exploration of an alternative approach to property rights which recently emerged in New Zealand: letting a river own itself (Te Awa Tupua Act 2017).
Autogestión and water sharing networks in Puerto Rico after Hurricane María
Published in Water International, 2021
Anais Roque, Amber Wutich, Alexandra Brewis, Melissa Beresford, Carlos García-Quijano, Hilda Lloréns, Wendy Jepson
Utilizing a similar extractive logic, neoliberalism is a political philosophy and economic practice that ‘promotes not just the withdrawal of the state from market regulation, but the establishment of market-friendly mechanisms and incentives to organize a wide range of economic, social and political activity’ (Venugopal, 2015, p. 172). Neoliberalism can be traced to British philosophers and critiques of feudalism in the late nineteenth century but which gained attention during the Second World War and the economic reforms enacted by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and United States President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s (Harvey, 2007; Henry, 2010). Neoliberal policies typically promote individualism, private property rights, deregulation, free markets and free trade. Under neoliberal thought, the role of the state is primarily to create and maintain the contexts and structures that support the creation and ‘proper’ functioning of markets and protections for individuals (e.g., military, defence, police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights) (Harvey, 2007). Additionally, Harvey states, ‘if markets do not exist (in areas such as land, water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution) then they must be created, by state action if necessary. But beyond these tasks, the state should not venture’ (p. 2). In other words, the state works first and foremost for the well-being of the markets, which are viewed as better positioned than the state to manage public resources (Ong, 2006). The focus on individualism implies the prioritization of freedom while accepting the inequalities resulting from market well-being preference (Tyner, 2016).
Redefining ‘cultural values’ – the economics of cultural flows
Published in Australasian Journal of Water Resources, 2021
Siobhan Davies, Jason Wilson, Malcolm Ridges
The origin of contemporary economic and legal frameworks can be traced to the Roman distinction between res and persona – in which the human and natural worlds are separate from each other (Bryan 2000). This separation has directly shaped contemporary constructs of property rights and value. Property rights are the rights held by people over things, and spiritual, social, economic and environmental values are treated as separate value domains which can be ‘traded off’ against each other in an optimisation or triple bottom line calculus.