The comments of Akinbola Akinwumi, Gregory Alexander, Trevor Barnes, Jane Baron, Clare Huntington, Trenton Oldfield, Reuben Rose Redwood, Sean Robertson, Eduardo M Peñer, Joseph Singer and participants at the 2011 Association of Law, Property and Society conference at Georgetown Law School, the 2012 Progressive Property Conference at Harvard, and the 2012 International Conference on Law and Society in Honolulu are greatly appreciated. Research funding was made possible by support from the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council.

1. Baron, Jane B, “The Contested Commitments of Property” (2010) 61 Hastings LJ 917 Google Scholar at 921.

2. Nedelsky, Jennifer, Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990)Google Scholar [Nedelsky, Private Property].

3. Alexander, Gregory et al, “A Statement of Progressive Property” (2009) 94 Cornell L Rev 743.Google Scholar

4. The statement was signed by Greg Alexander, Eduardo Peñalver, Joe Singer and Laura Underkuffer. The Progressive Property literature is largely US centred (although it does occasionally draw on some interesting comparative work, as well as the contributions of some Israeli scholars). The degree to which the ownership model is particularly American is worth reflecting upon, as may further comparisons to other jurisdictions. It should also be noted that this literature is broad and diverse, including a diverse array of scholars, some of whom may not identify with the statement. For one possible listing of its members, see Baron, Jane B “The Ex Pressive Transparency of Property” (2002) 102 Colum L Rev 208 CrossRefGoogle Scholar [Baron, “Ex Pressive Transparency”].

5. Alexander et al, supra note 3 at 743.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid at 744.

8. I should note that some progressive property scholars—notably Greg Alexander—do not see their work as adopting this approach. However, I take my characterization as more generally paradigmatic of the field.

9. Singer, Joseph, Entitlement: The Paradoxes of Property (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000) at 2–3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar [Singer, Entitlement].

10. Laura S Underkuffer similarly notes the dominance of what she terms the ‘absolute approach’ to property in US jurisprudence (which assumes that property is objectively defnable, is set apart from social context, and that it represents and protects the sphere of legitimate, absolute individual autonomy), which has tended to downplay an alternative understanding of property (the ‘comprehensive’ approach). See “On Property: An Essay” (1990) 100 Yale L J 127 [Underkuffer, “On Property”]. Gregory Alexander refers to the Blackstonian conception of property in “Property as Propriety” (1998) 77 Nebraska L Rev 667 [Alexander, “Property as Propriety”].

11. See generally, Singer, Joseph, “No Right to Exclude: Public and Private Accommodations and Private Property” (1996) 90 Nw U L Rev 1283 Google Scholar [Singer, “No Right to Exclude”].

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14. Ibid at 5.

15. Ibid at 5 [emphasis added].

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid at 9.

18. Underkuffer, “On Property”, supra note 10 at 133.

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20. Singer, “Property and Social Relations”, supra note 13 at 11-12 [emphasis added].

21. Ibid at 16.

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24. Ibid at 1252.

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29. Singer, “Reliance Interest”, supra note 19 at 621.

30. Ibid at 626, discusses how to make value choices, premised not on abstractions but on intuitions and ‘social facts’ and appeal to ‘shared experience.’

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33. Ibid at 2.

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40. Ibid at 6.

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43. Singer, “Reliance Interest”, supra note 19 at 659.

44. Singer, Entitlement, supra note 9 at 83.

45. Nedelsky, Private Property, supra note 2 at 54.

46. Underkuffer, Idea of Property, supra note 31 at 162.

47. Singer, “No Right to Exclude”, supra note 11 at 1453.

48. Underkuffer, Idea of Property, supra note 31 at 163.

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52. In my explorations of property in multiple empirical settings (gentrifcation, gardening, municipal property, indigenous lands, enclosure and so on) I have often drawn from progressive property scholarship and related writings, noting the mismatch between dominant conceptions of property, and empirical reality. Yet I have done so, increasingly, with a sense of dissatisfaction. While it is productive to reveal property’s diversity and complexity, for example, this does not appear to have dethroned the ownership model. How is it possible for dominant conceptions of property to endure, despite their manifest internal failures? Such questions have led me to probe for alternative understandings of the relationship between property and ‘reality’. In so doing, I will revisit some of my earlier writings—written before my engagement with performativity—as nascent, if unarticulated attempts at such a reworking. See Blomley, Nicholas, Unsettling the City: Urban Land and the Politics of Property (New York: Routledge, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar [Blomley, Unsettling the City].

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56. Barnes, “Making Space,” supra note 55 at 1437.

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63. We might usefully think of the performative effect of other ‘models’ of property, such as the commons, or the metaphors of the bundle of sticks, or the castle.

64. Underkuffer, Idea of Property, supra note 31 at 162.

65. A useful comparison of the differences between a constructionist and performative account through a property-based example can be found in the contending treatments of the extension of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), an environmental ownership model, to the Norwegian fishery. For Agnar and Páalsson, the ITQ is a brutal misinterpretation that nevertheless seeks to remake reality according to its own narrow vision. Helgason Agnar & Gísli Páalsson, “Cash for Quotas: Disputes Over an Economic Model in Iceland” in James G Carrier & Miller, Daniel, Virtualism: A New Political Economy (New York: Berg, 1998)Google Scholar. Holm criticizes this view as reliant on a view of the ITQ as separate from reality. The problem with the ITQ, for Holm, is not that it is an abstraction that ‘constructs’ reality from on high, but that reality is itself partly (re)performed through the ITQ: “[This is a story] about actors that become what they are as their relationships with other actors stabilize.” Holm, “Which Way”, supra note 50 at 239.

66. Mitchell, Timothy, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, and Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar [Mitchell, Rule of Experts].

67. As Laclau and Mouffe argue: “the fact that every object is constituted as an object of discourse has nothing to do with whether there is a world external to thought, or with the realism/idealism opposition. What is denied is not that objects exist externally to thought, but the rather different assertion that they could constitute themselves as objects outside of any discursive condition of emergence.” Ernesto Laclau & Mouffe, Chantal, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985) at 108 Google Scholar; see Searle’s distinction between brute facts, that can exist without human institutions, and institutional facts, that cannot. Searle, John, “Social Ontology and Political Power” in Smith, Barry et al, eds, The Mystery of Capital and the Construction of Social Reality (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2008) 19.Google Scholar

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71. Ibid at 9.

72. Ibid at 8.

73. Ibid at 2.

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78. Ibid at 50.

79. Ibid at 49.

80. Ibid at 17.

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83. Ibid.

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89. Mitchell, Rule of Experts, supra note 66.

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97. It should be noted, however, that such enactments in some senses preceded ‘private property’, in the sense that the earliest use of the term and its definition in legal dictionaries or legal writings was the eighteenth century.

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99. Explanations of how we negotiate the gap between property’s reality and dominant models include: Kevin Gray’s ‘mutual conspiracy’ of property talk in, “Property in a Queue” in Alexander, Gregory S & Peñalver, Eduardo M, eds, Property and Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) 165 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; legal realism’s strategy of consigning the ownership model to the past, as outdated; and the view of the diversity of property as a reflection of our different moral commitments described in Alexander, Commodity and Property, supra note 32 and Rose, Property and Persuasion, supra note 34. Singer suggests that departures from the ownership model are marginalized in our consciousness as they do not ft the prevailing model. Singer, “Reliance Interest”, supra note 19 at 701.

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103. RSBC 1996, c. 245.

104. Interview with author (22 January 2011).

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