It has been four months since I last posted a blog on this site. Among many other tasks, I was focused on completing my new book “Havings: Steps towards a New Economic Philosophy of Property and Beyond,” which will be released soon by Campus Publishers. This book is the culmination of my four years of work as a Principal Investigator in the Cooperative Research Center “Structural Change of Property.” Throughout these four years, I have rethought the institution of property, which I believe lies at the core of the current challenges related to climate change caused by unrestrained growth of the technosphere. While my perspective may seem similar to others, my conclusion differs because I have realized that both advocates and critics of the current property regime are trapped in the same way of thinking about property that has defined the issue since early Roman times in Western civilization. I believe this is due to a lack of conceptual means, or even just the words, to refer to this social practice in a different way – and accordingly, perform it differently. It seems that we are in a language trap.
This becomes even more evident when we consider the challenges in reconciling non-Western views with our standard language of property. Indigenous people across the globe face difficulties in their legal battles over their homelands and native territories, as they have to use established legal terms that fail to grasp the essence of how they perceive and experience their relationship to their land. In fact, their conception of land is not equivalent to our understanding of “property.” This raises the question: What is it?
In light of this context, I have chosen to introduce a completely new conceptual framework: the theory of havings. I have coined this term to represent a relationship between two entities where one entity exclusively belongs to the other. This unique relationship can be established not only through appropriation, but also through assignment and recognition, and it can take various structural forms, which I categorize as possession, ownership, and property. It’s important to note that property is just one form of having, often referred to as “private property”. However, in Western discourse, the other types of “property” or havings, in my parlance, are described in contrast to “private”, such as “public” or “common”. This characterization of property has led Western thinking astray, despite the existence of alternative views in the past. For instance, Aristotle supported exclusive property ownership for the household (hence “private”), while also emphasizing that its use should be for the common good (hence “public”). This common use should arise from the moral values of the community, rather than being enforced by law. For Aristotle, “private” and “public” were no opposites, but reconciled in a virtuous good life.
In order to understand different types of havings, it is important to consider whether and how the relationship is embodied. This concept is influenced by Sartre’s ontology of three modes of human existence, one of which is “avoir,” “having.” Fred Basso and I have introduced an embodied approach to property in our recent book, which I further explore and detail in my theory of havings. So, the crucial issue is not the contrast between private and non-private property, but the opposition between embodied and disembodied forms of having. In my perspective, property represents the disembodied form of having, originating from the practice of alienation through market transactions. Property is closely linked to money as a means of disembodiment. Historically, this disembodied form of having emerged in early Rome, as individuals sought to take advantage of market opportunities and free themselves from family and kinship constraints.
In the context of the technosphere, one of the most important advancements that disembodied the relationship between people and land was the creation of maps in the Roman provinces by Imperial land surveyors. Maps are a representation of land that reduces its natural complexity and allows for it to be valued in terms of money and traded. The technology of mapping has played a significant role in the Western expansion and the forceful colonization of the world. This has led to conflicts over Indigenous homelands, as they represent a clash between their embodied relation to the homeland and the abstract representation of it, which has often mediated the dispossession of native people. Sophie Chao‘s research in Indonesia demonstrates an alternative approach through embodied maps that visually represent the deep and meaningful relationship between people and their land, a connection that is often ignored in official maps, leading to a form of symbolic violence.
Embodied having something is not a “not-private” experience if we considered it to be non-exclusive. On the contrary, having something often implies a strong sense of exclusion, as the relationship with what is being had defines a person’s identity. However, in the Aristotelian sense, this identity includes belonging to a community, which may involve sharing and using havings with others. This idea is captured in Karl Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness: the concepts of embodiment, embeddedness, and relationality are essential in the theory of havings.
In summary, when institutional reforms establish non-exclusive forms of property, like public property owned by the state, they lead away from the intended goal. Capitalism and socialism both contribute to the growth of the technosphere as they are both forms of institutionalized disembodiment. An alternative perspective on havings emphasizes the importance of re-establishing the connection between people and the things they possess. As I have argued at length elsewhere, specifically, in the case of land, this means recognizing the relationship between people, other species, and their territories in a system of cohabitation called the “universal commons.” In this system, individuals still have individual rights of access and use, but they must also respect the norms and values of the community, similar to the historical commons that were suppressed during the capitalist property revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. Similar principles apply to other cases, such as the firm that would be reinvented as a community of collaborators.
The technosphere, our agency, our planet 