When Things Become Property ― Land Reform, Authority and Value in Postsocialist Europe and Asia

Governments have conferred ownership titles to many citizens throughout the world in an effort to turn things into property. Almost all elements of nature have become the target of property laws, from the classic preoccupation with land to more ephemeral material, such as air and genetic resources. When Things Become Property interrogates the mixed outcomes of conferring ownership by examining postsocialist land and forest reforms in Albania, Romania and Vietnam, and finds that property reforms are no longer, if they ever were, miracle tools available to governments for refashioning economies, politics or environments.

Johannes Stahl, former Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow in Natural Resource Economics and Political Economy at the University of California at Berkeley, now works for a multilateral environmental agreement dealing with trade in endangered species of fauna and flora.