The Prehistory of Private Property

The Prehistory of Private Property PDF Author: Karl Widerquist
Publisher: EUP
ISBN: 9781474447430
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Examining the origin and development of the private property rights system from prehistory to the present day This book debunks three false claims commonly accepted by contemporary political philosophers regarding property systems: that inequality is natural, inevitable, or incompatible with freedom; that capitalism is more consistent with negative freedom than any other conceivable economic system; and that the normative principles of appropriation and voluntary transfer applied in the world in which we live support a capitalist system with strong, individualist and unequal private property rights. The authors review the history of the use and importance of these claims in philosophy, and use thorough anthropological and historical evidence to refute them. They show that societies with common-property systems maintaining strong equality and extensive freedom were initially nearly ubiquitous around the world, and that the private property rights system was established through a long series of violent state-sponsored aggressions. Karl Widerquist is Professor of political philosophy at SFS-Qatar, Georgetown University. Grant S. McCall is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Tulane University and Executive Director of the Center for Human-Environmental Research.

The Prehistory of Private Property

The Prehistory of Private Property PDF Author: Karl Widerquist
Publisher: EUP
ISBN: 9781474447430
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book

Book Description
Examining the origin and development of the private property rights system from prehistory to the present day This book debunks three false claims commonly accepted by contemporary political philosophers regarding property systems: that inequality is natural, inevitable, or incompatible with freedom; that capitalism is more consistent with negative freedom than any other conceivable economic system; and that the normative principles of appropriation and voluntary transfer applied in the world in which we live support a capitalist system with strong, individualist and unequal private property rights. The authors review the history of the use and importance of these claims in philosophy, and use thorough anthropological and historical evidence to refute them. They show that societies with common-property systems maintaining strong equality and extensive freedom were initially nearly ubiquitous around the world, and that the private property rights system was established through a long series of violent state-sponsored aggressions. Karl Widerquist is Professor of political philosophy at SFS-Qatar, Georgetown University. Grant S. McCall is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Tulane University and Executive Director of the Center for Human-Environmental Research.

Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy

Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy PDF Author: Karl Widerquist
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748678670
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
How modern philosophers use and perpetuate myths about prehistoryThe state of nature, the origin of property, the origin of government, the primordial nature of inequality and war why do political philosophers talk so much about the Stone Age? And are they talking about a Stone Age that really happened, or is it just a convenient thought experiment to illustrate their points?Karl Widerquist and Grant S. McCall take a philosophical look at the origin of civilisation, examining political theories to show how claims about prehistory are used. Drawing on the best available evidence from archaeology and anthropology, they show that much of what we think we know about human origins comes from philosophers imagination, not scientific investigation.Key FeaturesShows how modern political theories employ ambiguous factual claims about prehistoryBrings archaeological and anthropological evidence to bear on those claimsTells the story of human origins in a way that reveals many commonly held misconceptions

Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income

Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income PDF Author: K. Widerquist
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137313099
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income argues that philosophers have focused too much on scalar freedom and proposes a theory of status freedom as effective control self-ownership: the power to have or refuse active cooperation with other willing people, or simply: freedom as the power to say no.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State PDF Author: Friedrich Engels
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Anthropology
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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The Politics of Private Property

The Politics of Private Property PDF Author: Simone Knewitz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793623767
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Located at the intersections of law and culture, The Politics of Private Propertyprovides a fresh perspective on the functions of private property within U.S. cultural discourse by establishing a long historical arch from the early nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The study challenges the assumption of an unquestioned cultural consensus in the United States on the subject of individual property rights, instead mobilizing property as an analytical category to examine how social and political debates generate competing and contested claims to ownership. The property narratives arising out of political conflicts, the book suggests, serve to naturalize the unequal social and economic structures and legitimize the hegemonic order, which however remains to be shifting and subject to challenges. Analyzing the property narratives at the heart of the U.S. American self-conception, The Politics of Private Property addresses the gap between the ideal of the U.S. as a universal middle-class society, characterized by a wide diffusion of property ownership, and the actual social reality which is defined by unequal dissemination of wealth and race-based structures of exclusion.

Property and Freedom

Property and Freedom PDF Author: Richard Pipes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307427358
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
"A superb book about a topic that should be front and center in the American political debate" (National Review), from the acclaimed Harvard scholar and historian of the Russian Revolution An exploration of a wide range of national and political systems to demonstrate persuasively that private ownership has served over the centuries to limit the power of the state and enable democratic institutions to evolve and thrive in the Western world. Beginning with Greece and Rome, where the concept of private property as we understand it first developed, Richard Pipes then shows us how, in the late medieval period, the idea matured with the expansion of commerce and the rise of cities. He contrasts England, a country where property rights and parliamentary government advanced hand-in-hand, with Russia, where restrictions on ownership have for centuries consistently abetted authoritarian regimes; finally he provides reflections on current and future trends in the United States. Property and Freedom is a brilliant contribution to political thought and an essential work on a subject of vital importance.

Comparative Property Law

Comparative Property Law PDF Author: Michele Graziadei
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1785369164
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
Comparative Property Law provides a comprehensive treatment of property law from a comparative and global perspective. The contributors, who are leading experts in their fields, cover both classical and new subjects, including the transfer of property, the public-private divide in property law, water and forest laws, and the property rights of aboriginal peoples. This Handbook maps the structure and the dynamics of property law in the contemporary world and will be an invaluable reference for researchers working in all domains of property law.

The Dawn of Everything

The Dawn of Everything PDF Author: David Graeber
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374721106
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume. The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action. Includes Black-and-White Illustrations

Prehistory

Prehistory PDF Author: Chris Gosden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198803516
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Recent archaeological discoveries from China and central Asia have changed our understanding of how human civilization developed in the period of some 4 million years before the start of written history. In this new edition of his Very Short Introduction, Chris Gosden explores the current theories on the ebb and flow of human cultural variety.

Areopagitica

Areopagitica PDF Author: John Milton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Freedom of the press
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description