Ownership as interpersonal dominance

Rudmin, Floyd W.

Bibliographic data

Book

Document type:: Book

Collection:: POP - Possession, Ownership, Property

Title:: Ownership as interpersonal dominance : a history and three studies of the social psychology of property

Year of publication:: 1988

Language:: English

Topic:: C - Psychology

Shelfmark:: C/R916 O9

Access:: Free access

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.48671/pop.AC14489044

6 self. Further evidence might be the finding that property injury is deemed less serious an offense to a person than is personal injury (Elkind & Dabek, 1977; Henderson, Brody, Lane & Parra, 1982). Property has been related to the self in non-experimental social psychology as well. In the nineteenth century German sociological tradition, Toennies (1887/1957) distinguished between concrete possession in an interpersonal, organic community and abstract property in an impersonal, formalized society. Both were mechanisms of interpersonal control, the former through the possession of people in familiar relationships, the latter through contracts between legal beings. Durkheim (1950/1958), another European founder of sociology, argued that the essential characteristic of private property was the public assertion of exclusive possession. In the U.S., George Mead argued that the very abstractness of property as a relationship with all other human beings renders property inherently hostile: Abstractness is given to the social relation involved in property through associating it with hostility. Previously property was a concrete social relation. The abstract property relation came into marriage and slavery through bringing in the outsider, one who had no rights in the group, no personality that gave him or her a place in the group....Abstractness always carries with it a degree of hostility. The attitude of the possession of money is an attitude of hostility toward all the rest of mankind. (Mead, 1982, pp. 87-88) Non-hostile relations exist in familiar relationships and in intimate, symbolic, self-defining possession of special property (McCarthy, 1984). It would seem that these sociologists might argue that the process of self-definition through assertive possession in commercial, legalistic societies inherently leads to materialistic values. The self-centeredness of property is also evident in dispossession processes, which are often perceived as domination of the self by others. Goffman (1961) has graphically described the dispossession process characteristic of total institutions: One set of the individual's possessions has a special relation to the self. The individual ordinarily expects to exert some control over the guise in which he appears before others. For this he needs cosmetic and clothing supplies, tools for applying, arranging, and repairing them, and an accessible, secure place to store these supplies and tools....On admission to a total institution, however, the individual is likely to be stripped of his usual appearance and of the equipment and services by which he maintains it. thus suffering a personal defacement. (Goffman, 1961, p. 20) This concurs with Waites’ (1945) earlier finding of the importance of personal hygiene items as property. The relationship of personal property to the sense of self and self-potency is also evident in burglary victims’ reactions, even among those who did not encounter the violators in person. Property theft Is frequently compared to invasion and rape (Belk, 1987; McGuire, 1980; Rudmin, 1987a). One victim described it as a loss of power:

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