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Three small almost-points or ruminations...

1) I am always struck at how we switched so starkly to a zero-sum view of the physical world from a global since over such a short period of time.

2) Blackstone (and Locke) are full of such horseshit that it boggles and befuddles the mind.

3) It's so wild about how many of these principles guide property law even to this day! The concepts that fought against "waste" once upon a time (think the rules of Adverse Possession, even if that is not actually invoked that often anymore) are still in play, with the definition of "waste" being refashioned to benefit the rule-makers (i.e. corporations and monied interests) of our time.

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Thanks again for another illuminating essay. It's nice to have a concise reference as I'm certainly not going to delve into these texts! Just being honest about my laziness! ;)

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Well, you're reading these so it's not all that lazy! I'm glad they're worthwhile, though. :)

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Please forgive my ignorance, but have you read/are you planning to read any Marx, Engels, or John Bellamy Foster on this? They certainly do address a lot of these issues in favor of abolishing private ownership, and Engels locates the origins property ownership squarely within the development of patriarchy and the ownership of women and children. Just a thought.

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My thought too.

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Not ignorance at all! A very fair question. I have read Marx and Engels (a long time ago) and will do so again, and sounds like I should add Foster to the list. I didn’t include them in the Threadable readings because I could only choose 9-12 readings, and wanted to focus on a) the philosophical and legal foundations of private property law in English common law (mostly because that’s what was carried over in colonization), and b) the real-world effects of that worldview and its actions, particularly on Indigenous people. It was important to me to question the basis of accepted private property thinking, and to include readings like the Charter of the Forest and Nick Estes to bring perspectives on the turning of commonly “owned” land into private property in a slightly different way. As in, not material that a lot of people might have read before.

But research for my book obviously has to be wider than that. Thank you the Foster suggestion in particular. That wasn’t on my list.

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Thanks for letting me know! And absolutely, that focus makes all kinds of sense. Since I’m tossing Marxist reading at you, two more writers you might possibly be interested in are Sylvia Federici, who discusses witch burnings as a means to seize property from older women particularly (and IIRC lynchings seem to be similarly motivated in the US), and Nancy Fraser’s new book, Cannibal Capitalism, which is a great synthesis of older Marxist theory with some of the other urgent topics of the day, like the care crisis, ecological destruction, political consolidation, and explicitly BIPOC concerns. So for example she explores the important differences between exploitation (of workers) versus the expropriation (of land, lambs, labor, and limbs) that happened with colonization and enslavement. I think Adam Rothman said (or at least retweeted) recently that academics read three books to write one sentence, and I’m certainly not pushing that on you (or anyone!), but I thought you might want a heads up on these two writers. I so appreciate your work here! Thanks very much.

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Definitely! (Also LOL on the “three books, one sentence,” so true.) I do have Federici but not Fraser, and it sounds very important. Makes me think of the book “Columbus and Other Cannibals,” which I read last year but am starting to forget the details of.

I like that articulation of the difference between exploitation and expropriation. So important. Thank you!

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Wetiko psychosis.

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Did you read Columbus and Other Cannibals? He talks about that. It's a short book and immediately engaging.

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Yes. While an adjunct instructor for four years at the local university I taught a freshman class called, "Thinking about Climate Change" (the emphasis was on critical thinking). In an effort to get them to start thinking about some of the sociological underpinnings of climate change, and of environmental degradation more generally, we had our students read an excerpt from Professor Forbes's book.

It is not enough to simply apply additional layers of technology to problems that a blind obsession with endless economic growth and technology have {arguably} created in the first place. If we are to survive as a species, we humans must fundamentally realign our relationship to the planet, and we must learn new ways to imagine ourselves. The old ways are proving to be toxic.

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

― Edward Abbey

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