Working group 2 Objects of property: Goods and Resources

Working group 2 brings together projects that are primarily concerned with the possibilities, variances, and limits of ownership of specific property objects and/or ask about their displacement and corresponding changes in the order and embedding of property. The growing importance of ecological issues, (bio-)technological innovations, the rising importance of information, ideas, and knowledge in the information economy, as well as the financialization of goods give rise to new or changed property objects that raise questions concerning the ownability of objects.

With regard both to biological goods as well as the ownership of intangible goods ('intellectual property'), extensive multidisciplinary research is already available. However, it usually remains limited to the respective thematic field. What has not been done so far is the systematizing consolidation of the heterogeneous objects of property.

The working group is interdisciplinary and consists of sociologists, political scientists, and historians.