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The Problem of Property (HEC-RS-PROPER-24)

HEC-RS-PROPER-24

Description

The nineteenth century was the century of the global problem of property, in which the politics of possession and dispossession, of rent and ownership, shaped European states, their empires, and globalization. This seminar surveys recent approaches to the history of ownership and the impact of property regimes on the people, spaces, networks, and institutions of the modern European world. Case studies will move from the micro (family and inheritance) to the macro (transnational legal regimes), and between cities (real estate) and the global countryside (primitive accumulation). Property will help us reconsider the institutions of empire, capitalism, and liberal democracy as they were entwined in the social construction of modernity. We also give attention to how property shapes and limits historical inquiry, critically analyzing scholarly approaches from business history, material culture studies, global urban history, postcolonial studies, and environmental history.

 

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