Posted on behalf of the organizer. As always, apologies for cross-posting, and please forward widely. 

Property Rights Regimes and Ecological Preservation

Dimensions of Political Ecology: Conference on Nature/Society
February 28-March 3, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY

Session Organizer: Chris Wilhelm, College of Coastal Georgia

Ideas about property rights are central to capitalism, democracy and other Western ideologies.  Property rights also have a profound effect on the ecological preservation of nature, and on common-property resources like air and water.  A group of interdisciplinary scholars reacting to Garret Hardin’s ideas about the ‘tragedy of the commons’ argued there were four dominant property rights regimes (open access, private property, communal property, and state property regimes) that facilitated economic activity and regulated the use of resources (Berkes, et al, 1989; Feeney, et al, 1990).  These regimes are ideals only and frequently overlap, but at their core they all seek to bound and separate land and resources into rational units.  Property rights are the means by which nature is commodified, a process which entails the separation of objects from their environment and their conversion to capital (Cronon 1991). 

While property rights facilitate the separation of plants and animals from their environment, the science of ecology seeks to examine the connections between plants and animals and their environment.  Ecosystems do not respect property regimes, and ecological preservation is often complicated by a patchwork of property regimes within an ecosystem.  The very concept of private property seems contradictory to ecological understandings of nature, yet various property rights regimes are necessary to protect ecosystems.  Each of these property regimes, except perhaps for open-access regimes, have had success at protecting ecosystems and at effectively regulating the uses of nature. 

This session calls for papers that broadly address the relationships between property regimes and ecological preservation.  Potential questions might include: How do ideas about property affect ecological preservation?  How have property rights been used to protect ecosystems or to exploit ecosystems?  How have ideas about property rights changed over time?  How are property rights defined in different ecosystems?  How are they defined in different parts of the world and by different cultures and societies?  How have property rights been interpreted in the context of different economic activities?  Are private property and ecological preservation antithetical or can the former be used to implement the latter?  Which different property rights regimes offer the best models for ecological preservation?  Which regimes create the most opportunity for the destruction of ecosystems?  How are all these regimes reflective of the societies that produce them?  How do these property rights regimes come into existence and how do they change and evolve over time?  

Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words by November 25 to Chris Wilhelm ([log in to unmask]).  Participants will still need to register at www.politicalecology.org.

The third annual Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference will be held at the University of Kentucky February 28-March 3, 2013. For information on travel, registration, keynotes and other specifics, please see http://www.politicalecology.org/