Subversive Property (Social Justice) - Softcover

Keenan, Sarah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 113878589X ISBN 13: 9781138785892

Publisher: Routledge, 2015

Synopsis

This book explores the relationship between space, subjectivity, and property in order to invert conventional socio-legal understandings of property. Moreover, Sarah Keenan demonstrates that new political possibilities for property may be unveiled by thinking about property in terms of space and belonging, rather than exclusion.

Drawing on feminist and critical race theory, this book shifts focus away from the propertied subject and onto the broader spaces in and through which the propertied subject is located. Using case studies, such as analyses of compulsory leases under Australia’s Northern Territory Intervention and lesbian asylum cases from a range of jurisdictions, Keenan argues that these spaces consist of networks of relations that revolve around belonging: not just belonging between subject and object, as property is traditionally understood, but also the less explored relation of belonging between the part and the whole.

This book therefore offers a conceptually useful way of analysing a wide range of socio-legal issues. It will therefore be of relevance to those working in the area of property and legal geography, but also to those with more general interests in socio-legal studies, social and political theory, postcolonial studies, critical race studies and gender and sexuality studies.

About this title

About the Author:

Sarah Keenan is a Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck, University of London. She researches in the areas of feminist legal theory, critical race theory and property.

Review:

"Subversive Property is a well researched, theoretically solid, and important addition to the scholarship of property.  Sarah Keenan constructs her argument upon the firm foundation of her deep knowledge of land use policy, refugee law, legal geography, and philosophies of identity.  Her brilliant insights wrench readers away from the conceptually-flat notion of property as a bounded resource over which individuals exercise a bundle of rights, and open multiple avenues for exploring the power and agency of those who exercise or, as the case may be, flout rights to property.  By focusing our attention on action, she compels us to move beyond familiar, commonsensical explanations as to why certain people and behaviors belong in certain spaces while others do not." - Sig Langegger, Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography (April 2016)

"Subversive Property is a conceptually rich book that ambitiously works to redraw the relationships between belonging, property and space. Itis tremendously inter-disciplinary, engaging with debates in geography, law and society, refugee and diasporic studies, and postcolonial feminism amongst others – always adding a new spin... Fundamentally, I think, what Sarah’s book does is to show us a way of re-imagining property that – from a left-wing perspective – widens our conceptual options. So property doesn’t simply signal an unequivocal structure of possession or control where the only radical thing left to do is to decide whether, and to what extent, property should be communalised or discarded. Instead, by delineating a diverse set of relations of belonging, property gets rendered far more ambivalent." - Davina Cooper, Kent Law School

"Sarah’s work does more than open up the debate: it challenges the foundation of a dominant legal narrative which says that there can be those who are always relegated to the realm of the dispossessed, and this is where it ends." - Emma Patchett, University of Münster

"On reading Sarah’s work, I felt myself to be living proof of the soul of her contentions... The beauty in Sarah’s book is that she not only convincingly and engagingly articulates her theory of subversive property, but in doing so she grapples with personal and political realities sensitively and insightfully." - Nadine El-Enany, Birkbeck School of Law

Open access "Book Discussion: Subversive Property" from feminists@law (vol. 4, no. 2, 2014) available here: http://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/feministsatlaw/issue/view/12

"Subversive Property is at the absolute cutting edge of theory about property and space. Sarah Keenan theorises property and space in a way that is intensely imaginative, as well as having significant explanatory power. Not only does she emphasise the dynamic qualities of space, she also connects subjects to space in a manner which is both compelling and creative. The book challenges both the simplistic image of a law which is drawn onto space, as well as the idea of a pre-existing subject who owns property. The field in which property-law-the subject-space operate is described through dynamic relationships and with an eye on the future rather than the past. The book is highly readable and I recommend it to everyone interested in property theory and ideas about space." - Margaret Davies, Flinders University

"[Keenan's] invitation to open up property, both analytically and politically, is welcome, valuable and important. The concept of holding up, for me, is particularly useful in inviting attention to the way in which property’s manifold relations are sustained by a wider network. Property is not outside such networks, but is an effect, produced through the dense alignment of a wide array of resources. Property is only property to the extent that it is successfully performed as such."- Nick Blomley, Social & Legal Studies Journal 

'The great challenge in Keenan's work is not only in its discussion of the vulnerability of existing rights and privileges, including those in the identity of people, to social change. Rather, it lies in its choice of property--the most "conservative" (in the true meaning of the word) of all social and legal ideas--as the vehicle for identifying the nature of rights of empowerment, inclusion and exclusion, and the fissures that exist in undermining them.' - Professer Laura Underkuffler (Cornell University)

'Keenan claims that her theory will help us think about property, power and the law in ways that allow us to understand and articulate relations of power and subordination in novel ways. I certainly found that to be true. I can easily imagine using her work in my graduate legal theory course, as an example of theory that is both accessible and complex. The link in later chapters with ‘real world’ problems makes this book a great resource for undergraduate teaching as well.' - Angela Cameron (University of Ottawa)

'The book is a rich tapestry of movements, bodies, spaces and legalities that reach beyond the purely physical without however ever stopping being solidly spatial. Keenan offers some very important lessons in this book, such as the elaboration of responsibility in terms of locality, the role of skin, gender and race for space, and the diasporic belonging, amongst others; but for me nothing is more seductive and fundamentally useful than Keenan’s description of how we all ‘take space with us’, donning it like a mantle that both defines us and is defined by us. Subversive Property is a treasure-trove of institutional subversion and political mobilisation.' - Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Professor of Law and Theory (University of Westminster)

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 113878589X
• ISBN 13: 9781138785892
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 202