On the blinding clarity of property rights: Seven fragments of reductionism in the theory of property

Abstract

This paper presents a historical commentary on arguments in theory of property that reinforce the vision of strong and clear property rights dominant in developmental policy today. Building upon the article from Duncan Kennedy in 2013 that analyses this vision, this paper tackles additional issues in emergence of the vision. In doing that the paper relies on broadly genealogical approach to focus on a binary opposition that has been present in the theory of property almost since its historical establishment in Western thought. This methodology allows us to conceptualize the problem in more substantive terms than Kennedy does and show how radical shift is necessary to overcome the problems that the vision entails.

Keywords

• property
• economic development
• exclusion
• rights