This book takes the concept of piracy as a starting point to discuss the instability of property as a social construction and how this is spatially situated. Piracy is understood as acts and practices that emerge in zones where the construction and definition of property is ambiguous. Media piracy is a frequently used example where file-sharers and copyright holders argue whether culture and information is a common resource to be freely shared or property to be protected. This book highlights that this is not a dilemma unique to immaterial resources: concepts such as property, ownership and the rights of use are just as diffuse when it comes to spatial resources such as land, water, air or urban space.
By structuring the book around this heterogeneous understanding of piracy as an analytical perspective, the editors and contributors advance a trans-disciplinary and multi-theoretical approach to place and property. In doing so, the book moves from theoretical discussions on commons and property to empirical cases concerning access to and appropriation of land, natural and cultural resources. The chapters cover areas such as maritime piracy, the philosophical and legal foundations of property rights, mining and land rights, biopiracy and traditional knowledge, indigenous rights, colonization of space, military expansionism and the enclosure of urban space.
This book is essential reading for a variety of disciplines including indigenous studies, cultural studies, geography, political economy, law, environmental studies and all readers concerned with piracy and the ambiguity of property.
Introduction: Property, place and piracy
Martin Fredriksson & James Arvanitakis
On Decolonising our Thinking and Cultural Exchange
Ingrid Matthews
Commons, Piracy and Property: Crisis, Conflict and resistance
James Arvanitakis & Martin Fredriksson
Property, Sovereignty, Piracy and the Commons: Early Modern Enclosure and the
Foundation of the State
Sean Johnson Andrews
Unreal Property: Anarchism, Anthropology and Alchemy
Jonathan Paul Marshall & Francesca da Rimini
Piratical Constructions of Humanity: Innocence, Property, and the
Human-Nature Divide
Sonja Schillings
Mobility in Early Modern Anglo-American Accounts of Piracy
Alexandra Ganser
Compensation in the Absence of Punishment: Rethinking Somali Piracy as a Form
of Maritime Xeer
Brittany Gilmer
Commodification of Country: An Australian Case study in Community Resistance
to mining
Ingrid Matthews
Privateering on the Cosmic Frontier? Mining Celestial Bodies and the
NewSpace Quest for Private Property in Outer Space
Matthew Johnson
The Ancestry Land: Chinas Pursuit of Dominance in the South China Sea
Jingdong Yuan
Nuclear Testing and the Terra Nullius Doctrine: From Life Sciences to Life
Writing
Mita Banerjee
From Biopiracy to Bioprospecting: Negotiating the Limits of Propertization
Martin Fredriksson
Gated Housing Hierarchy
Franklin Obeng-Odoom
Pirate Places in Bangkok: IPRs, vendors and Urban Order
Duncan McDuie-Re & Daniel F. Robinson
The Real Gruen Transfer - Enclosing the Right to the City
James Arvanitakis & Spike Boydell
Epilogue
James Arvanitakis & Martin Fredriksson
Martin Fredriksson Almqvist is Assistant Professor at the Department for Culture Studies, Linköping University, Sweden
James Arvanitakis is Professor and Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Western Sydney, Australia
