Sarah Keenan

Subversive Property: Reshaping Malleable Spaces of Belonging

Despite a wide field of scholarship critiquing the idea and workings of property, most understandings still centre on the propertied subject. This article spatializes property in order to shift the focus away from the propertied subject and onto the broader networks of relations that interact to form property. It draws on critical geography, phenomenology and empirical socio-legal work to argue that property can be understood as a relationship of belonging that is held up by the surrounding space — a relationship that is not fixed or essential but temporally and spatially contingent. Building on Davina Cooper’s analysis of ‘property practices’, I argue that when analysed spatially, the two types of belonging she discusses — belonging between a subject and an object and between a part and a whole — become indistinguishable. As such, characteristics generally associated with identity politics can be understood as property in the same way that owning an object can — in terms of belonging in space. This spatialized understanding shows the breadth of property’s political potential. Although property tends to be (re)productive of the status quo, it can also be subversive. Property can unsettle spaces too.

Property as Governance: Time, Space and Belonging in Australia's Northern Territory Intervention

This article analyses two cases brought by aboriginal Australians against the Australian government acquisition of long leases of their land under the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007. These leases are conspicuous, particularly in that the government always made it clear that it would not take up its right to exclusive possession of the leased land, and has not done so. The leases have not been used to evict residents, as some feared; nor to pursue mining or agricultural activity. Socio-legal theories centered on the right to exclusive possession cannot account for these leases. The article explores the use of property under the 2007 Act, the legal geographies of the areas subject to the leases and the political potency of property beyond exclusive possession, and suggests an understanding of property as a spatially contingent relation of belonging. Specifically, the article argues that property is productive of temporal and spatial order and so can function as a tool of governance.This article analyses two cases brought by aboriginal Australians against the Australian government acquisition of long leases of their land under the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007. These leases are conspicuous, particularly in that the government always made it clear that it would not take up its right to exclusive possession of the leased land, and has not done so. The leases have not been used to evict residents, as some feared; nor to pursue mining or agricultural activity. Socio-legal theories centered on the right to exclusive possession cannot account for these leases. The article explores the use of property under the 2007 Act, the legal geographies of the areas subject to the leases and the political potency of property beyond exclusive possession, and suggests an understanding of property as a spatially contingent relation of belonging. Specifically, the article argues that property is productive of temporal and spatial order and so can function as a tool of governance.