Property, Sociology Of

Since the inception of modernity, property has been at the center of social and political thought. If there has been one great divide about what modern societies are and what they may become, that has been the issue of property. Remarkably, in the field of sociology, for several decades property has not attracted a great deal of attention and it is difficult to find a major work on social theory that treats it as a theoretical problem worth being explored. Ralph Dahrendorf's critique of Marxist conceptions of property under capitalism was the last relevant attempt in that respect; since then, the question of property has been diluted into debates on other concepts, such as class and power. Although it is difficult to find a major ...