Re-articulating property

Book talk by Veit Braun, Goethe University Frankfurt

Abstract

How can we grasp the problems of property today? From land to genes to data, a dizzying number of things have been tuned into the property, which raises the question if the property has stayed the same over the process. In this talk I propose to disassemble property: rather than from a legal angle or a social perspective, I try to take a pragmatist view: property, I argue, is best understood as a bundle of scripts that format, demarcate and distribute people and things. The more we multiply these scripts, the harder they become to align and control. If we want to fix the property, we therefore have to re-assemble its scripts.

Bio

Veit Braun is a research associate at the University of Frankfurt. His work is situated at the intersection of science, technology, law and the economy. In his book At the End of Property (Bristol University Press) he explores the multiple crises of property as a social form.

About the lecture series

The Critical Data and AI Lecture series is organized by Louis Ravn and Nanna Bonde Thylstrup as a joint venture between the research projects AI REUSE (DFF) and Data Loss: The Politics of Disappearance, Destruction and Dispossession in Digital Societies (DALOSS, ERC Stg).