The sociology of property rights.

INTRODUCTION

Property is ubiquitous. The idea of private property suffuses classic liberal thought. Property rights lie at the intersection of law, economy, the state, and culture. For example, intellectual property rights (IPR) concern leading-sector industries like biotechnology and computers; property constitutes the foundation for many kinds of inequality; and property rights preoccupy scholars studying the transition economies of Eastern and Central Europe. And yet contemporary sociology has said much less about property than its centrality warrants, largely ceding the topic to economics and law.

Ownership involves socially recognized economic rights. Property is that over which such rights obtain, and owners are those who possess the rights. In a sense, property concerns the dyadic relationship between people and things. Sir William Blackstone famously defined property as: "... that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe"(Blackstone 1766, p. 2). His definition poses private ownership as an individual's exclusive control over property. Yet despite its ideological power, this dyadic conception misses the social and political dimensions of property (Fligstein 2001, p. 33; Shipton 1994, p. 349). The right to control, govern, and exploit things entails the power to influence, govern, and exploit people (Roemer 1989). Owners of productive assets can prevent nonowners from using them, and thereby shape nonowners' life-chances. Furthermore, what separates ownership from mere possession is the fact that others recognize ownership rights, either directly or through a formal legal system. If private property appears to be dyadic, in reality it always involves triadic relationships.

Swedberg (2003, p. 203) observes that property has not been much studied by sociologists. Property rights are discussed by some (e.g., Emigh 1999, Fligstein 2001, Sorensen 2000, Stinchcombe 1983), and they figure into studies of transition economies (e.g., Nee 1992, Stark 1996, Walder 1992), class analysis (Wright 2002), comparative capitalisms (Dore 2000, Hall & Soskice 2001), and specific types of property (Patterson 1982), but they have not received an encompassing sociological treatment. By contrast, economists have long been interested in property rights (Alchian & Demsetz 1973, Barzel 1989, Libecap 1989, Eggertsson 1990). Sociology's neglect is unfortunate, for the founders of sociology knew that property rights have great sociological relevance (Weber 1981; Marx & Engels 1947, pp. 79-81; Durkheim 1992, p. 121-170). The most obvious connection, Marx recognized, is with social stratification. Ownership constitutes one of the most enduring dimensions of inequality (Earle 2000). Property in modern societies is maintained by the legal system, and so directly implicates law and the state, but informal property rights emerge as practices decouple from formal institutions. Many instances of dramatic political change involved shifts in property rights (e.g., the Russian and French Revolutions). In addition, to exchange property rights is the elemental market transaction, and so property grows in importance with expanding markets.

We begin with Reeve's (1986, p. 11) definition of property. Owner A owns property P if and only if:

1) A has the right to use P;

2) A may exclude others from using P;