ABSTRACT
This chapter draws out commonalities between the individual studies and also highlights the diversity of issues of social justice at stake in disagreements and conflicts involving property. Property claims can be made both to mobilise and to challenge the forces that maintain property, and such claims will often be contested ideologically, legally, and practically. Contested property claims are ubiquitous in the contemporary world as ever more conflicts over property emerge and political struggles are increasingly framed as questions of property relations and property rights. Only certain relations are named 'property' and particular social actors recognised as owners. Anthropologists have particularly highlighted how different notions and practices of belonging can constitute ownership and property relations: this is the case, for example, when people get access to resources through membership of different communities. Property conflicts often intersect with struggles over racial, gendered, economic, and cultural inequality and oppression. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
