Ownership feels like one solid thing, but it comes apart into separate rights that different people can hold at once. The episode unpacks the rights to use, control and transfer, and shows why security of tenure is really a perception. The sharp edge is that the poor, and very often women, hold only use rights.
Who's who
- Wesley HohfeldLegal theorist who in 1913 broke rights into rights, duties, privileges, powers
- A. M. HonoréLegal scholar who set out eleven incidents of ownership in 1961
- Harold DemsetzEconomist who in 1967 framed market exchange as trade of property-right bundles
- Eric ClaeysLegal scholar who says the bundle metaphor elaborates but cannot define ownership
Timeline
- 1913Hohfeld breaks rights into precise correlative elements
- 1961Honoré sets out eleven incidents of ownership
- 1967Demsetz frames market exchange as the trade of two bundles of property rights
- 2002FAO's Land Tenure and Rural Development turns the theory into a field tool
Still debated
Scholars argue whether the bundle of sticks defines property or only describes it, and whether separable rights protect or endanger the weak. Whether policy can engineer security through titling, and where statutory ends and customary begins, are also open.