Property's Relations: Tracing Anthropology in Property Theory
Meghan L. Morris
Abstract
Recent debates in property theory revolve around two opposing views of property: the idea that property is made up of relations between people with respect to things, and the notion that it is an exclusive relationship between a person and a thing. This article traces the intellectual history of the role of anthropology in each of these theories, from the influence of anthropology on legal realist notions of property as social relations to the ways in which property scholars in the law and economics tradition have drawn on anthropology to build accounts of property as human nature. These traditions have generally understood the value of anthropology for property theory as offering a privileged view into universal social functions or human nature. The article builds on this history to argue that anthropology can and should continue to productively shape theories of property, but via a more nuanced understanding of the discipline’s objects and methods. It is anthropology’s focus on relations as its primary object of study which is so productive for property theory, as it opens up the central nexus which both dominant traditions in property scholarship aim to theorize.