The Return of Private Property

What makes private property valuable, desirable or workable? This book focuses on social and economic dimensions of private property after the agrarian reforms of 1996 in Azerbaijan. It looks at the kinds of land and cultivation strategies emerging in the decades after the fall of the Soviet Union and asks why rural households were often unwilling to cultivate the privatized land shares they received for free, despite the threat and existence of rural poverty. Consideration is given both to households which were engaging in cultivation and those which were not. This includes internally displaced persons who were formally excluded from the privatization process but were nevertheless successful and eager cultivators. How and why were they keen on using land? How far does private property thrive on its own, without the support of lucrative markets or without the implementation of state sponsored economic policies? Through the lens and insights provided by economic anthropology, this study chronicles the historical legacy of authoritarian state structures, as well as the contemporary micro- and macro-economic struggles that mark a politics of property after socialism.