Property | Who owns the city?

Anyone who believes they can take over cities will face protest.

Property is one of those categories whose meaning seems to be known until one tries to put that meaning into concrete terms. In our capitalist society, it initially seems self-evident, but a closer examination reveals that it is a complex, socially contested, and inherently contradictory concept.

To clarify this, Oldenburg social philosophers Niklas Angebauer, Jacob Blumenfeld, and Tilo Wesche have now published the comprehensive volume "Contested Property." In five parts, it sets out to illuminate the most burning questions currently raised by the social category of property. While the first two parts are predictably theoretical—dealing with concepts and critiques of property and its limits—the subsequent parts become encouragingly concrete. The comprehensive third part, for example, addresses the area in which most of us experience the problematic nature of property in everyday life: the question of home ownership. A further part then addresses the question of the connection between ecology and property, and a final part addresses the question of intangible property.

Tilo Wesche first notes the "oblivion of property" in social research until the 2008 financial crisis. Until then, property was mostly understood simply as private property . An understanding that still prevails in society today. "Regardless of whether it concerns redistribution from the bottom to the top, concentrations of social power, the global divide between rich and poor, the transgression of planetary boundaries, or the endangered privacy in the digital space: social conflicts of this kind are driven, exacerbated, and perpetuated by property rights." Particularly in the two "theoretical" sections, the authors pursue the thesis that the category of property, which in liberal society is justified by the concept of freedom, is increasingly undermining this concept in capitalism.

This thesis—which initially remains predictably abstract—is made concretely plausible, at the very latest, in the texts that deal with the housing issue. For example, the Berlin philosopher Rahel Jaeggi uses Kreuzberg as an example to demonstrate why the conceptual narrowing of property to private property must lead to the dissolution of social cohesion. "Housing," she argues, "is not a private matter, but a public matter, even if it takes place in private." This may initially seem paradoxical. What this means, however, becomes clear when we consider the simple fact that the practice of living is not limited to what we do within our "own" four walls, but also affects our neighborly coexistence: What neighborhood do I live in, what employment, educational, and entertainment opportunities are available here, etc.

Ownership of living space, if understood as in our society as private property for the purpose of exploitation (vulgo: for renting), becomes paradoxical in that it simultaneously negates this social component and exploited. On the one hand, the market logic justifies the exorbitant rents in so-called trendy neighborhoods by the social life in these areas; on the other hand, this social life is destroyed by capitalization, which triggers a process of displacement. Rahel Jaeggi succinctly summarizes this paradox: The question is not only who owns the city, but above all how it belongs to whom.

That this paradox of bourgeois property has taken on global dimensions in a very material sense in our time is demonstrated by the texts dealing with the question of "ecology and property." Here, for example, with the issue of man-made climate change, the concept that focuses on the exclusive rights of use of individuals must reach its limits. It is therefore only logical that a significant portion of climate activism addresses questions of property. Not only theoretically, but also very practically through blockades and acts of sabotage. The authors succeed in establishing this connection between the socially dominant concept of property, the consequences for climate change, and the forms of action of the opponents without creating a scandal.

What the volume promises, it also delivers: Property reveals itself here as a multifaceted, at times paradoxical concept capable of achieving far more than its one-sided narrowing to private property ownership. It also reveals itself as a concept whose understanding requires urgent reform not only in academia, but above all in society, if we are to face the challenges of the widely invoked "polycrisis." A first step toward this reform has certainly been taken with this profound contribution to the debate from Suhrkamp.

Niklas Angebauer/Jacob Blumenfeld/Tilo Wesche (eds.): Contested Property: A Socio-Theoretical Debate. Suhrkamp, 703 pp., paperback, €34.