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Laura Brace Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2004, viii+256pp.ISBN: 0 7486 1535 0
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Laura Brace offers a much needed re-examination of the modern notion of property in this informative and clearly written book. Her main point is that property can only be fully understood through an analysis of class, race and gender relations, which themselves reveal how honour should be affirmed against degradation, righteous labour affirmed against drudgery and belonging affirmed against exclusion all in the name of freedom. These affirmations contribute to the main themes of the book and are explored in various ways through each of the ten chapters.
After giving an outline of the issues to be discussed in Chapter One, Brace begins her investigation in the 17th century with a comparative analysis of Locke and Winstanley. She sets her discussion against the backdrop of the 'improvement' of property and how it should be sustained and made useful and productive. Hence, Winstanley's communal understanding of property is contrasted with Locke's liberal individualistic justification of private property. Locke is criticized in particular for justifying the exclusion of the poor from common land at home, which also resulted in colonialism in America. Native Americans were not improvers of the land, so English colonists were fully justified in taking over their land and excluding them from it. This led to racism as native Americans were seen as 'savages' on a par with the poor in England.
The next chapter moves into the eighteenth century and considers the arguments of Godwin and Bentham on the problem between...