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 BerlinCarl 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

New publication!

What are the ownership structures in Chinese capitalism? Philipp Köncke, Stefan Schmalz and Lucas Erlbacher explore this question in their article "The anatomy of Chinese capitalism: Sectoral variation in party-state permeation and corporate governance" in the journal competition&change. Using a new dataset on China's 500 largest companies, they arrive at important conclusions:  These range from a fundamentally dual ownership structure to inter-sectoral variation. 

Read the full article here

The SFB in the media

An article in the taz newspaper on masculinity research refers to the new book by Sylka Scholz. It deals with the construction of masculinity, including in the context of employment. The article also emphasizes the East German perspective that Sylka Scholz brings to the debate on masculinity.

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New publication!

The new issue of the Berlin Journal of Sociology entitled "Refiguration or Transformation? The reorganization of the world beyond globalization" has been published. This is our second cooperation with the SFB 1265, following a special issue on urban space and property. The current issue includes an article by Hartmut Rosa on “The transformation of a social formation: Reflections concerning the structural change of property” and an article by Stefan Schmalz titled "An endless financial crisis? The capitalist world economy between transformation and refiguration".

 

New publication!

Few people know that in a 1980 verdict, the Federal Constitutional Court placed social security benefits as (social) property of those entitled to them under the property protection of the Basic Law (Article 14). In an article for the journal Soziale Sicherheit, Silke van Dyk examines the role of social property in old-age provision and discusses implications for questions of (in)equality, (in)security and solidarity.

 

Read the article here (Paywall)

Event information

On July 1, Silke van Dyk will give a keynote on the topic "On lighthouses and their dark sides - transformative practice and public sociology" at the conference "Transformation Sociology Concrete" in Darmstadt. The lecture will examine the transformative potential of progressive municipalist city governments that aim to de-privatize the city on the basis of public infrastructures and common goods. The central question is what role prominent case studies play for transformative movements in other places and what the task of public sociology can be for the analysis and critique of so-called lighthouses.

New podcast episode online!

The 19th episode of our podcast appropriate, titled "Looking Back at Eight Years of Municipalist Government in Barcelona: The movement-party Barcelona en Comú" has been published. In cooperation with the Urban Political Podcast, Silke van Dyk and Luzie Gerstenhöfer are discussing the alternative approach to local politics by Barcelona en Comú with activist and former political advisor Elia Gran.

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Events

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Universität Erfurt; Erfurt

Identitätsbildender Konsum und sozialökologische Transformation

Workshop held by Dirk Schuck and Marco Sonnberger

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