Property: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:23, 13 March 2005

Revision as of 05:02, 14 March 2005

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In common use, property is simply 'one's own thing' and refers to the relationship between individuals and the objects which they see as being their own to dispense with as they see fit. Scholars in the social sciences freqently conceive of property as a 'bundle of rights and obligations.' They stress that property is not a relationship between people and things, but a relationship between people with ''regard to things''. Property is often conceptualized as the rights of 'ownership' as defined in [[law]]. According to this definition, property, for example, might be defined as the right, legal or moral, to ultimately determine the use and control of something, including the right to transfer such rights to others. This right is distinguished from ''control,'' which may be transferred separately —for example, a building remains the property of landlord even when the use of it is contractually transferred to a tenant.

The general use of the term "property" may be derived from or related to the sociological concept of [[belonging]], and hence attached to aspects of personal responsibility in society. Slavery is one critical jucturejuncture where there is overlap between concepts of [[humanism]] and ownership —for example, a kind slavemaster may have regarded his [[slavery|slaves]] or [[servitude|servants]], like they would their own [[children]]. As the sociological distiction between good and bad treatment of people evolved, the development of the concepts of ownership with personal responsibility may at some levels still be intrinsically intertwined with concepts of family. Early on in the [[Bible]] of [[Judaism]], [[Christianity]] and [[Islam]], in [[Genesis]], [[God]] grants to man "dominion over all the birds of the air, beasts of the earth, fish of the sea." As "dominion" may have good or bad connotations —not all [[king|kings]] are considered [[justice|just]] or [[wisdom|wise]] —so too are there understood degrees for responsibility in ownership.

The sociologial view toward property first gained prominance as anthropoligistsanthropologists confronted societies in which they found no formal law, but which seemed to have systems of property. The approach also gained ground in the past century as people began to trade in individual rights and obligations (as opposed to trading things and with them the entire bundle of rights and obligations).

Recent scholarship has stressed that the notion of property has no coherent stable meaning. Many indeed question the value of the term (especially given changes that have taken place in practice). Some suggest that the term is best thought of as a discourse having great influence over how people see rights and obligations, but not referring to anything in particular.