What is the Property Taskforce?

Property Taskforce is a virtual think-tank for people commited to studying and confronting the barriers individual property rights pose to indigenous sovereignty, ecological governance, and political freedom.

Property Taskforce is proudly powered by Drupal open source software.

This website, moderated by Shiri Pasternak, focuses on the role property rights play in the organization of society. It takes a critical perspective of property rights and the role the expansion of these rights play in the advancement of colonization and privatization.

In particular, the focus of this website is to explore the following 4 developments:

(1) The ways expansions of property rights mean new forms of social, political, and economic control to enforce these rights;

(2) The ways private property rights underpin many forms of privatization, beginning with and further perpetuating colonial policies towards indigenous peoples;

(3) The cooptation of “the commons” and common property regimes by academics, politicians, and global business elites toward neo-liberal economic ends;

(4) The "convergence of freedom" that unifies opposition to the enclosures of information and ecological commons by embracing collective ownership models and ethos.

The institution of property is also approached here as a way of knowing the world. Ontological understandings of property are foundational to this project.