Shared empowerment: A defence of group ownership

About the session: This paper develops and defends a conception of group ownership, an institution that has so far been neglected in the philosophical literature on property. On the conception I defend, group ownership is the exclusive position of authority that is held by a private and democratically organised group to decide how an object may be used, within limits set by law. Drawing on empirical studies of natural and agricultural resource management, I show that group ownership is valuable because it helps to realise people’s freedom from domination. This happens in two steps: first, group ownership regimes help their members to efficiently secure the capabilities they need to withstand arbitrary power. Second, the institution gives people control over the decisions that affect such capabilities. In a slogan: group ownership puts people in charge of their own empowerment. Under conditions I specify, this makes the institution superior to other types of property.

About the speaker: Yara Al Salman is assistant professor in Ethics and Political Philosophy. Her main research interests are in political philosophy, and are about property, freedom and domination, and more recently professional ethics for civil servants. Yara obtained her PhD in 2022 for the thesis Sharing in Common: A Republican Defence of Group Ownership, which was awarded with distinction (cum laude) and for which she received two national awards.

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