ABSTRACT
I provide a broad historical overview of the commodification of land, focusing on the institutional conditions that rendered such commodification impossible before the modern period, and describing the changes to those conditions such that it subsequently became possible. After a review of ancient legal forms of the relationship to land, I argue that in ancient and medieval times, land had a political value that ruled out considering it as a commodity. With the development of the market society in the modern period, ownership of land appeared as desirable from the perspective of economic development, and attempts were made to turn land into a fenced and privately owned commodity. Finally, I look at the different types of objections that could be made to this process of commodification.
