Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership

In Colonial Lives of Property Brenna Bhandar examines how modern property law contributed to the formation of racial subjects in settler colonies and the development of racial capitalism. Focusing on settler colonialism in Canada, Australia, and Israel and Palestine, Bhandar shows how the colonial appropriation of indigenous lands depends upon ideologies of European racial superiority, as well as legal narratives that equated civilized life with English concepts of property. In this way, property law legitimates and rationalizes settler colonial practices while it racializes those deemed unfit to own property. The solution to these enduring racial and economic inequities, Bhandar demonstrates, requires developing a new political imaginary of property in which freedom is connected to shared practices of use and community rather than individual possession.