Property, Power and Human Rights

Reviews / Votes

'In Property, Power and Human Rights, Laura Dehaibi disentangles the all-too-dominant Western liberal conception of property from a human right to property. In conceiving of property as a human right, Dehaibi provides a critical methodology formulated through insights from Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), critical legal theory, law & society, and a range of legal cases involving claimants in the Global South or marginalized populations in Europe. She offers a powerful argument for the necessity of a nuanced, contextualized approach to property, inclusive of social relations, political and power dimensions, and lived experiences with land, particularly for those on the edges of ownership. In other words, she gives her readers not just an alternative substantive understanding of property relations but rather an alternative method to conceive of property, one which dethrones the individualistic, capitalist and market-oriented one often found in jurisprudence and commentary in favor of a critical, grounded, and dialogical approach.' -- Priya Gupta, McGill University Faculty of Law, Canada 'In this book, Professor Dehaibi provides an invaluable contribution to the literatures of both property and international human rights. By grounding the human right to property in the lived human experience of social participation, particularly among those at the margins, she simultaneously reaffirms property's importance while extending our understanding of the divergent contexts that give the right its meaning.' -- Eduardo M. Penalver, Seattle University, US