School of Earth Society and the Environment (SESE) Colloquium

"The surprises of property: remaking nature-society relations through privatization"

Becky Mansfield

Dept. of Geography, Ohio State University

 

This talk is about the significance of privatization, and more specifically property, in neoliberal nature-society relations.  I make two central arguments about the broad role of property:  First, although privatization is often taken as one of many aspects of neoliberalism, I argue that privatization helps hold these many aspects together.  Second, the property relations that comprise privatization are incredibly complex and cannot be subsumed within common notions of ownership.  Instead, we need to reconceptualize property as a social relation of interdependence.  I use my research, conducted over the past decade, on the shift toward privatization in management of US North Pacific fisheries to illustrate these broad ideas.