American property : a history of how, why, and what we own / Stuart Banner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Banner, Stuart, 1963-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Property--United States--History.

Property.

Right of property--United States--History.

Right of property.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (384 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In America, we are eager to claim ownership: our homes, our ideas, our organs, even our own celebrity. But beneath our nation's proprietary longing looms a troublesome question: what does it mean to own something? More simply: what is property?The question is at the heart of many contemporary controversies, including disputes over who owns everything from genetic material to indigenous culture to music and film on the Internet. To decide if and when genes or culture or digits are a kind of property that can be possessed, we must grapple with the nature of property itself. How does it originate? What purposes does it serve? Is it a natural right or one created by law?Accessible and mercifully free of legal jargon, American Property reveals the perpetual challenge of answering these questions, as new forms of property have emerged in response to technological and cultural change, and as ideas about the appropriate scope of government regulation have shifted. This first comprehensive history of property in the United States is a masterly guided tour through a contested human institution that touches all aspects of our lives and desires.Stuart Banner shows that property exists to serve a broad set of purposes, constantly in flux, that render the idea of property itself inconstant. Despite our ideals of ownership, property has always been a means toward other ends. What property signifies and what property is, we come to see, has consistently changed to match the world we want to acquire.

Contents:

Lost property

The rise of intellectual property

A bundle of rights

Owning the news

People, not things

Owning sound

Owning fame

From the tenement to the condominium

The law of the land

Owning wavelengths

The new property

Owning life

Property resurgent

The end of property?.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674060821

0674060822

OCLC:

804897538