Table Of ContentProperty, Place and Piracy
This book takes the concept of piracy as a starting point to discuss the instab-
ility 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 pro-
tected. 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 transdiscipli-
nary and multi-t heoretical 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 expan-
sionism 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.
James Arvanitakis is Professor and Dean of Graduate Studies at the University
of Western Sydney, Australia.
Martin Fredriksson is Assistant Professor at the Department for Culture
Studies, Linköping University, Sweden.
Routledge Complex Real Property Rights Series
Series editor: Professor Spike Boydell
University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Real Property Rights are central to the global economy and provide a legal
framework for how society (be it developed or customary) relates to land and
buildings. We need to better understand property rights to ensure sustainable
societies, careful use of limited resources and sound ecological stewardship of
our land and water. Contemporary property rights theory is dynamic and needs
to engage thinkers who are prepared to think outside their disciplinary
limitations.
The Routledge Complex Real Property Rights Series strives to take a
transdisciplinary approach to understanding property rights and specifically
encourages heterodox thinking. Through rich international case studies our goal
is to build models to connect theory to observed reality, allowing us to inform
potential policy outcomes. This series is both an ideal forum and reference for
students and scholars of property rights and land issues.
Land, Indigenous Peoples and Conflict
Edited by Alan Tidwell and Barry Zellen
Beyond Communal and Individual Ownership
Indigenous Land Reform in Australia
Leon Terrill
Strata Title Property Rights
Private Governance of Multi-o wned Properties
Cathy Sherry
Property Rights and Climate Change
Land- use Under Changing Environmental Conditions
Fennie van Straalen, Thomas Hartmann and John Sheehan
Property, Place and Piracy
Edited by James Arvanitakis and Martin Fredriksson
Property, Place and Piracy
Edited by James Arvanitakis and
Martin Fredriksson
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, James Arvanitakis and Martin
Fredriksson; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of James Arvanitakis and Martin Fredriksson to be identified as
the authors of the editorial matter, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Arvanitakis, James. | Fredriksson, Martin.
Title: Property, place, and piracy / edited by James Arvanitakis &
Martin Fredriksson.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon [UK] ; New York : Routledge, 2017. |
Series: Routledge complex real property rights series | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017027067| ISBN 9781138745131 (hardback : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9781315180731 (ebook : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Right of property–Philosophy. | Property–Philosophy. |
Piracy (Copyright) | Piracy–Law and legislation. | Eminent domain.
Classification: LCC K721.5 .P76 2017 | DDC 323.4/6–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017027067
ISBN: 978-1-138-74513-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-18073-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Goudy
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents
Notes on contributors vii
Foreword x
1 Introduction: property, place and piracy 1
MARTIN FREDRIkSSON AND JAMES ARvANITAkIS
2 On decolonising our thinking and cultural exchange 11
INGRID MATThEWS
3 Commons, piracy and property: crisis, conflict and resistance 23
JAMES ARvANITAkIS AND MARTIN FREDRIkSSON
4 Property, sovereignty, piracy and the commons: early modern
enclosure and the foundation of the state 36
SEAN JOhNSON ANDREWS
5 Unreal property: anarchism, anthropology and alchemy 50
JONAThAN PAUL MARShALL AND
FRANCESCA DA RIMINI
6 Piratical constructions of humanity: innocence, property,
and the human–nature divide 65
SONJA SChILLINGS
7 Mobility in early modern Anglo- American accounts of piracy 81
ALEXANDRA GANSER
8 Compensation in the absence of punishment: rethinking
Somali piracy as a form of maritime xeer 93
BRITTANY GILMER
vi Contents
9 Commodification of country: an Australian case study in
community resistance to mining 106
INGRID MATThEWS
10 Privateering on the cosmic frontier? Mining celestial bodies
and the ‘NewSpace’ quest for private property in outer space 123
MATThEW JOhNSON
11 ‘The ancestry land’: China’s pursuit of dominance in the
South China Sea 140
JINGDONG YUAN
12 Nuclear testing and the ‘terra nullius doctrine’: from life
sciences to life writing 157
MITA BANERJEE
13 From biopiracy to bioprospecting: negotiating the limits of
propertization 174
MARTIN FREDRIkSSON
14 The gated housing hierarchy 187
FRANkLIN OBENG- ODOOM
15 Pirate places in Bangkok: IPRs, vendors and urban order 202
DUNCAN Mc DUIE- RA AND DANIEL F. R OBINSON
16 The real Gruen Transfer: enclosing the right to the city 218
JAMES ARvANITAkIS AND SPIkE BOYDELL
17 Epilogue 231
JAMES ARvANITAkIS AND MARTIN FREDRIkSSON
Index 235
Contributors
Sean Johnson Andrews is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Columbia
College, Chicago. he is author of Hegemony, Mass Media, and Cultural Stud-
ies (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016), co-editor of Cultural Studies
and the ‘Juridical Turn’ (Routledge, 2016), and writes frequently on media,
cultural studies, property, piracy and the law.
James Arvanitakis is Professor of Cultural Studies and Dean of Graduate Stud-
ies at Western Sydney University and was named Prime Minister’s Univer-
sity Teacher of the Year (2012). he is the co-editor of Universities, the Citizen
Scholar and the Future of Higher Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and
tweets at @jarvanitakis.
Mita Banerjee is Professor and Chair of American Studies at the University of
Mainz, Germany. From 2010–2015, she was Research Fellow of the Guten-
berg Research College (GFk). her research interests include postcolonial
literature, ethnic American literature and culture, the American Renaissance
and issues of naturalisation and citizenship. her book Medical Humanities in
American Studies: Life Writing, Narrative Medicine and the Power of Autobio-
graphy is forthcoming from Winter University Press.
Spike Boydell, PhD FRICS FAPI FIvEM, is a property rights expert, a property
theorist and a specialist in valuation, sustainability and pacific land tenure.
he is Retired Professor of the Built Environment (University of Technology
Sydney 2006–2016), Cofounder of Customary Land Solutions and General
Editor of the Routledge Complex Real Property Rights Book Series.
Francesca da Rimini (aka dollyoko) is a transdisciplinary artist and writer who
has created and collaborated on narrative poetic and political works using
various media and internet platforms since the 1980s. Dr da Rimini is cur-
rently a research associate at the University of Technology Sydney and at
the University of Adelaide, Australia.
Martin Fredriksson is Associate Professor at the Department of Culture Studies
(Tema Q), Linköping University, Sweden. he has worked extensively with
issues concerning the theory and history of piracy, commons, property rights
viii Contributors
and the history of copyright. he has been visiting fellow at MIT, Western
Sydney University and Amsterdam University.
Alexandra Ganser is Professor of American Studies at the University of vienna,
Austria. her research interests include mobility studies, early American and
antebellum popular culture. her book on Atlantic narratives of piracy
(1678–1865) is forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan (2018), following
Pirates, Drifters, Fugitives: Figures of Mobility in American Culture and Beyond
(co-edited with heike Paul and katharina Gerund, 2012).
Brittany Gilmer is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice
at Florida International University. her research focuses on maritime crime
and security in East Africa. She is author of Political Geographies of Piracy:
Constructing Threats and Containing Bodies in Somalia (Palgrave, 2014).
Matthew Johnson is currently in his third year of a PhD candidature with the
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney.
his forthcoming dissertation engages with further questions around outer
space as commons, space mining as a ‘techno-fix’ for unlimited economic
growth, and the sociology of the ‘NewSpace’ movement. he has studied soci-
ology at an undergraduate and at post-graduate level, and currently works
part-time in policy and social research.
Duncan McDuie-Ra is Professor of Development Studies at University of New
South Wales, Australia. his most recent monographs include Northeast
Migrants in Delhi: Race, Refuge and Retail (Amsterdam University Press,
2012), Debating Race in Contemporary India (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and
Borderland City in New India: Frontier to Gateway (Amsterdam University
Press, 2016).
Jonathan Paul Marshall is a future fellow at the University of Technology
Sydney. he writes about online life, disorder, climate change and psychol-
ogy. he is the author of Living on Cybermind (Peter Lang, 2007); co-author of
Disorder and the Disinformation Society (Routledge, 2015); editor of Depth Psy-
chology Disorder and Climate Change (JungDownunder Books, 2009) and co-
editor of Environmental Change and the World’s Futures (Routledge, 2015).
Ingrid Matthews teaches ethics, human rights and law, and researches social
and cultural studies, citizenship and text analysis methods at Western Sydney
University. She is co-author of Law in Perspective (NewSouth Publishing,
2015) and has published on a range of subjects including citizenship (2013,
2014), and Australia–Israel relations (2015).
Franklin Obeng-Odoom teaches property and political economy at the Univer-
sity of Technology Sydney. Previously, he was a teaching fellow at the Uni-
versity of Sydney where he was based at the Department of Political
Economy. Obeng-Odoom’s books include The Myth of Private Property (Uni-
versity of Toronto Press).
Contributors ix
Daniel F. Robinson is Associate Professor in Environment at University of New
South Wales, Australia. his research focuses on the regulation of nature and
knowledge, ‘biopiracy’, access and benefit sharing relating to biological
resources, Indigenous/customary laws and biocultural protocols, ethical
biotrade and political ecology. he is a research fellow with ICTSD and has
worked with UNDP and GEF, GIZ and AusAid.
Sonja Schillings is a researcher in American studies at the Justus-Liebig-Uni-
versität Giessen, Germany. her first book, Enemies of All Humankind: Fictions
of Legitimate Violence (2017) was published with the University Press of New
England. She has published on human dignity and American literature, race
and space, piracy, and interdisciplinary research methods.
Jingdong Yuan (PhD, Queen’s University, Canada) is an associate professor at
the Centre for International Security Studies, University of Sydney. his
research focuses on Chinese defence and foreign policy, nuclear arms control
and Indo-Pacific security. he is currently working on a book on Chinese
foreign policy towards South Asia.
