How has it come about that indigenous cultures, body parts, and sequences of musical notes are considered property? How has the movement from collective to privatized systems affected notions of property? At what point in transaction chains do native cultures, indigenous medicines, or cyberdata become objects and therefore propertized, and what are the social, economic, and ethical considerations for such transformations?

Addressing these hotly contested issues and many more, Property in Question interrogates the very concept of property and what is happening to it in the contemporary world, in case studies ranging from Romania to Kazakhstan, Africa to North America. The book examines not only the changing character of the property concept, but also its ideological foundations and political usages. Authors address bio-transactions, music copyright, cyberspace, oil prospecting, debates over privatization of land and factories, and dilemmas arising with new forms of ownership of businesses.

Offering a fresh perspective on contemporary economic transformation, this volume is a long overdue investigation of the power of the private property concept, as well as an exploration of how the global economy may be subtly, even invisibly, changing what property means and how we relate to it.

About the Authors/Editors

Katherine Verdery Eric R. Wolf Professor of Anthropology and Interim Chair,University of Michigan Caroline Humphrey Professor of Asian Anthropology, University of Cambridge

Contents

Introduction: Raising Questions about Property
Caroline Humphrey and Katherine Verdery

Part I: The 'Things' of Property

Bodily Transactions: Regulating a New Space of Flows in 'Bio-Information'
Bronwyn Parry

Heritage as Property
Michael A. Brown

The Selective Protection of Musical Ideas: The 'Creators' and the Dispossessed
Anthony Seeger

Crude Properties: The Sublime and Slime of Oil Operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Suzana Sawyer

Part II: Property, Value and Liability

Prospecting's Publics
Cori Hayden

The Obligations of Ownership: Restoring Rights to Land in Postsocialist Transylvania
Katherine Verdery

Proprietary Regimes and Sociotechnical Systems: Rights over Land in Mongolia's 'Age of the Market'
David Sneath

Part III: Cultural Recognition

At Home in the Violence of Recognition
Elizabeth Povinelli

Cultural Rights and Wrongs: Uses of the Concept of Property
Michael Rowlands

The Menace of Hawkers: Property Forms and the Politics of Market Liberalization in Mumbai
Arvind Rajagopal

Part IV: Critiquing Property

Value, Relations, and Changing Bodies: Privatization and Property Rights in Kazakhstan
Catherine Alexander

Economic Claims and the Challenges of New Property
Carol M. Rose

Cyberspatial Properties: Taxing Questions about Proprietary Regimes
Bill Maurer