Includes bibliographical references and index.

The properties of property / Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet von Be nda-Beckmann, and Melanie G. Wiber -- Ownership in stateless places / C harles Geisler -- The romance of privatisation and its unheralded chall engers : case studies from English, Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet his tory / Esther Kingston-Mann -- Beyond embeddedness : a challenge raised by a comparison of the struggles over land in African and post-sociali st countries / Pauline E. Peters -- Land as asset, land as liability : property politics in rural Central and Eastern Europe / Thomas Sikor -- Property, labour relations and social obligations in Russia's privatis ed farm enterprises / Oane Visser -- Cooperative property as the limit / John R. Eidson -- Who owns the fisheries? Changing views of property and its redistribution in post-colonial Maori society / Toon van Meijl -- How communal is communal and whose communal is it? Lesssons from Min angkabau / Franz and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann -- Moving borders and in visible boundaries : a force field approach to property relations in th e commons of a Mexican ejido / Monique Nuijten and David Loranzo -- 'Th e tragedy of the private' : owners, communities and the state in South Africa's land reform programme / Deborah James -- The fold conceptualiz ation of property and forest-related going concerns in Madagascar / Fra nk Muttenzer -- Property rights, water and conflict in the western U.S. / Edella Schlager -- Appropriating family trees : genealogies in the a ge of genetics / Gisli Palsson -- Cultural property, repatriation and r elative publics : which public? Whose culture? / Melanie G. Wiber.