Property in Contemporary Capitalism By PaddyIreland, Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2024, 310 pp., £19.99

Abstract

Paddy Ireland’s masterly exploration of the nature of property in contemporary capitalism argues that property is a major– and undertheorized– constituent of capitalism’s current crisis. For Ireland, property is inextricably linked to rising indebtedness, recurring economic crises, increasing inequality, environmental degradation, and the accelerating climate crisis. Urgent and fundamental reform of the property–capitalism nexus is vital, but property theory, stuck in a ‘new essentialism’, misunderstands contemporary property. Ireland observes that most property scholarship works from within an analytical jurisprudential tradition seeking universal truths about the transhistorical and transcultural essence of property. This approach, so remote from empirical realities, is woefully inadequate for telling a different story of property. If a new story is to emerge– and for Ireland it must, because property ownership, and consequentially power, is destructively concentrated in the hands of extremely wealthy individuals and corporations– then that story must be interdisciplinary, historically informed, and sufficiently eclectic to facilitate conceptualizations of property that highlight its contingency and malleability. This review is structured as follows. It begins by sketching out the contents of the book, highlighting the breadth of Ireland’s scholarship. It then responds to the book’s stated goal– to widen the conversation about property– by considering how property’s contemporary significance might be further explored. Theoretically, we ask what a more developed Polanyian perspective might add to Ireland’s analysis. Methodologically, we consider what might be required of an empirical approach to contemporary property problems. Finally, we consider the implications for the teaching of property law.

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ORCID for Helen Carr: orcid.org/0000-0001-8025-1288

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