Project Area Subjekte Conflicts between subjects of property

Legal entities, social inequality, power structures

Multiple lines of conflict are drawn between (non-)owners. The most well-known case involves questions and struggles over distribution, such as conflicting interests between capital and labour, private enterprise and state, or in light of historically conditioned inequalities between population groups rooted in colonialism and slavery, among other factors. At the same time, property structures with complexly organised or divided authority - in companies, foundations, or partially privatised infrastructures - involve various property subjects simultaneously who compete for dominance and negotiate their powers. Finally, societal property relations are not only conditioned by power inequalities but in turn shape power relations; the consequences range from the formation of a state-private establishment in non-liberal countries to the crisis of liberal democracies. In the first phase, we examined such problems under the title of 'contested private property'; from the systematic classification as conflicts between property subjects, we expect more precise structural-analytical comparisons and insights. In both historical and contemporary-oriented projects, two potentially (but not consistently) contrary trends are up for debate: While on one hand growing or perpetuated inequality in property, its conditions and effects are examined, on the other hand regulations are debated that at least set limits for individual and institutional owners or in some cases tend to exclude certain groups from accumulating property.