1. The Inside Perspective

How does an owner feel about owning her things? Quite good, according to most writers on the subject, so good that she is thought to be considerably more reluctant to give up what she has than to try to get something of equal or greater value that is merely in prospect.4 Indeed, although there are a few spoilsport dissenters, most attribute a larger social good to the good feelings that property gives to owners. Some of the theories on the topic overlap, but they can still be divided into several categories, on the understanding that these are not airtight.

1.1 Identity formation

Among legal theorists of property, the one who is probably most associated with this psychological view of ownership is Margaret Radin, due to her authorship in 1980 of a now very well-known article, ‘Property and Personhood’.5 In that article, the dominant psychological picture was that property enables persons to establish and develop a sense of self. Radin did not include all property in this category, however, but rather distinguished what she called ‘personhood property’ from ‘fungible property’. In her depiction, only the former type of property has special significance for the property holder, whereas the latter type is interchangeable and impersonal. Nor does the category of ‘personhood property’ define any specific objects that carry those links by their nature. Instead, in Radin’s presentation, a given object can shift categories in different contexts, depending on the object’s history and the emotional freight that this history gives it for a particular individual.6 In her example, a wedding ring is personhood property in the hands of the spouse, but it is fungible property in the hands of a pawnbroker.

In the original article, many of Radin’s examples concerned people’s homes. A home, like a highly personal object like a wedding ring, is a thing into which one pours ones memories, affiliations, personal projects—in short, the control of these kinds of objects helps one to construct a kind of personal saga and indeed to understand one’s self as a self.

Radin’s article generated an enormous follow-up literature by other authors, much of it treating the ‘personhood’ analysis very positively. But it has also drawn a certain modicum of criticism. For example, it has been difficult to see what legal consequences flow from the category of personhood property, since any given object can slip in and out of that category. The article’s stress on homes has attracted some hostile fire as well. Recent empirical scholarship has argued that people do not actually see their homes as central to who they are; they are more likely to cite family, friends, and professions as the dominant features of their

4For the ‘endowment effect’, see e.g. Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler 1990; Knetsch 1989.

5Radin 1982.

6Radin 1982, 959–60. For a similar depiction, see Kopytoff 1986, 64–9, describing objects as moving in and out of commodity form.

way around. Notice that the self that one creates for others may be something of an artifice, with clothing and cosmetics and hairpieces, not to speak of muscle cars and pricey McMansions. But it is a protective artifice, which brings us to another psychological state.

1.3 Refuge

A third variant on these insider psychological perspectives on property is one that builds on the ability of property to exclude, more or less for the purpose of getting the breathing room one needs for other projects. A well-known example is Virginia Woolf ’s praise of A Room of One’s Own.15 A person needs space and security for the sake of privacy, calm, thought; in other words, one needs property for the sake of doing the things that one wants to do in the world. Libertarian thinking builds on this protective quality of property, albeit in a somewhat more truculent vein. But here too property is seen as giving the owner the privacy and refuge to do whatever he or she likes, free from the demands of nosy neighbours. On her own property, the owner may grow an apple, eat an apple, paint an apple, throw an apple, crush an apple. Property gives her the ability to say to the world, just get out of my hair, and let me do what I want so long as I do not intrude on your property.16 The most striking examples of this strand of the psychology of property describe physical property—land, space, a room. Nevertheless, owning assets of a less tangible form can serve the same purpose. Woolf ’s main concern, after all, was an annual income.

1.4 Empowerment

Still another psychological state associated with property refers to a political dimension. A widely known example comes from the work of the economist Milton Friedman, who argued that dictatorship is well-nigh impossible where people can freely acquire and keep property.17 Widely dispersed property ownership creates many alternative sources of power and implicitly gives people the confidence to speak their minds without fear of reprisal. Central capital ownership and a centralized direction of the economy, on the other hand, may make political engagement dangerous for the ordinary citizen: speak up and you lose your job, or your ability to travel, or the possibility to get your children into a good school. Individual property, on the other hand, is said to bolster the courage of owners, who have less to fear from those in political power.18

Moreover, property arguably gives people the sense that they have ‘skin in the game’ in the political order, with something to say about the political activities that

thinking, where the importance of ‘independence’ was paramount and often focused on ownership of one’s own property. See, e.g. Federal Farmer 1787–8, 253.

may affect their property.19 In this sense, legal scholar Bernadette Atuahene argues that titling programmes in less developed countries can ‘deepen democracy’.20 One might give an example from contemporary China: private individuals have only relatively recently been allowed to own their own residences, but China’s newly minted owners of condominiums have organized themselves into local, regional, and even national associations to pursue common interests, and some have been able to raise objections when governments have acted arbitrarily toward their property.21

In these two somewhat different senses—independence on the one hand and a stake on the other—one could see property ownership as a psychological backdrop to political engagement.

1.5. Generosity

A fifth view of the psychology of property is that property enables the owner to be generous toward others. Indeed, the encouragement of this virtue was one of Aristotle’s justifications for property.22 There is of course plenty of evidence that poor people can be very generous indeed, and there is even a theory to explain this evidence (i.e. that high-risk situations encourage sharing).23 But at the same time, grinding penury can narrow the mind’s focus to one’s own immediate necessities. Having more means having more to give away; the psychological security of having assets arguably allows one to pay attention to the needs and wants of others.

1.6 Economic incentives

A sixth and very widely cited psychological state associated with property links property to economic activity. Jeremy Bentham was the great exemplar of this version of the psychology of ownership: when one feels secure in one’s ownership, he argued, one is encouraged to invest time, effort, and money on the things that one owns.24 The reason is that the secure owner will take the gains from her own prudent investments; and of course if she lazes about, failing to plan and to work, she is very likely to suffer losses. Property thus acts as a psychological carrot as well as a stick, incentivizing each owner to improve what she has; moreover, if she can safely trade with others, she and everyone else will have even more reason to improve their belongings and make them even more valuable, for circulation in a larger market.

19 This is also an old idea, propounded by some who thought that enlightened monarchs would assist commercial classes for the sake of increasing tax revenue, but then would find their own control challenged by the new classes. See Rose 1989, 80–2, and sources cited therein.

20 Atuahene 2006. 21 Kaufman 2004, A1.

22Aristotle 350bc, at 1120b (liberal person pays attention to property in order to be able to give to others).

23Ellickson 1993, 1332–44 (communal ownership described as a version of insurance in high-risk situations).

24Bentham 1789, chs. 7–11, 109–22.