SFB 294 Structural Change of Property

The SFB short film:

About property in transition and the work of the SFB.

This film is the work of Catharina Göldner and Katharina Hamann.

The members of the Collaborative Research Centre in summer 2023

Image: Marlen van den Ecker

Welcome to the website of the Collaborative Research Centre TRR 294 "Structural Change of Property"!

The Collaborative Research Centre pursues the goal of investigating the fundamental structural change of property that could be observed at the latest since 1989. The Collaborative Research Centre contains a total of 23 subprojects at five locations in Germany: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Sprecher*innenhochschule), Universität Erfurt, Freie Universität Berlin, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Technische Universität Darmstadt.

While private property has gained in importance worldwide since 1989 under conditions of increasing concentration and deregulation, the resulting property system has proved to be both crisis-prone and highly controversial in the face of new economic, political and technological challenges. It isn´t challenged only by the global financial and economic crises, but also by political conflicts over the appropriation, distribution and containment of private property, as well as by the dynamics of the knowledge and bio-economies, which are linked to alternative concepts of common property, shared use and free access to resources.

News

Sept. 10, 2024

The SFB in the media

SFB spokesperson Silke van Dyk (C04) writes in her guest article for Der Spiegel about the need for a strong left and the tasks it faces. In addition to defending liberal democracy, she emphasizes the need to build a social and infrastructural foundation, which includes strengthening public infrastructure as opposed to private property. She also emphasizes that criticism of the system from the left, which targets the fundamental problems of the economic and social system and thus also takes a critical view of property relations, is central.

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Sept. 4, 2024

New publication in the book series “Structural Change of Property”

The fourth volume in the Open Acess series has been published by Campus today. Sofia Bianchi Mancini, Helen A. Gibson, Dirk Schuck and Markus Vinzent are the editors of the volume Relating to Landed Property. The contributions in this volume engage with postcolonial critiques of land tenure and provide a much-needed contextualisation of the ways in which histories of divine possession, empire, settler colonialism, slavery and the dispossession of indigenous peoples inform contemporary practices of land tenure.

Sept. 3, 2024

Panel “Generativität und Eigentum” (Generativity and ownership) on practical philosophy conference

Susanne Lettow (C02) will chair the panel “Generativity and Property” at the Conference on Practical Philosophy, which will take place at the University of Passau from September 19-20, 2024. Abibi Stewart (C02) will speak on the panel on “Generativity as Labor in the Context of the Global Reproductive Economy”. Helen Gibson (A02) will speak on “‘Critical Fabulation’ as a historical-philosophical method: Grand Midwives and the unlearning of propertization”. The detailed program is available here.

Aug. 13, 2024

Call for Papers

Contributions are being sought for the journal Cultural Science, edited by Carsten Herrmann-Pillath (C01). The journal is dedicated to the study of more-than-human culture. Contributions may be critical, analytical and/or empirical. Dialogic contributions are sought that are interested in the production and translation of new ideas and new knowledge, especially across perceived and contested borders between systems, groups and identities, and academic disciplines. The PDF with more information is available here.

Aug. 8, 2024

New source of the quarter in the New Library of Property

Eduardo Relly (JRT03) presents the Carta de Belém in this quarter's new source. The declaration represents an important step in the debate on the indigenous struggle for the ownership of biodiversity.

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To the News archive...

Events

Nov. 6, 2024 - Nov. 9, 2024

Volkshaus; Jena

International Annual Conference "Beyond (Private) Property"

At the conference in Jena, we will discuss different forms of ownership that cannot be reduced to private property - which is dominant in modern societies - and ask about possibilities for organizing social relations in a non-property form or beyond private property. The programme is available here.

Workshop: From Contested Ownership to (In)Voluntary Returns: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Postcolonial Fight for Restitution and Repatriation

The interdisciplinary workshop aims to reassess the fight for repatriation and restitution by bringing together questions of ownership and voluntariness that are addressed in the Collaborative Research Center “Structural Change of Property” (Universities Erfurt and Jena) and the DFG-Research Group “Voluntariness” (Universities of Erfurt, Jena and Oldenburg). Focusing on questions of ownership, the workshop will examine how activists have tried to contest Western notions of ownership in the debates on repatriation and restitution and how Western museums and collection have reacted towards these efforts. The workshop will take place with our Mercator Fellow Flower Manase.