Ownership as interpersonal dominance

Rudmin, Floyd W.

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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

Author:: Rudmin, Floyd W.

Year of publication:: 1988

Language:: English

Subject:: Besitz; Eigentum; Sozialpsychologie

Topic:: C - Psychology

Shelfmark:: C/R916 O9

Access:: Free access

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

56 The claim to preserve by a putative possessor is made visible by a sign of some kind, which, following ethological practice, may be called a “marker”...Markers are of various kinds. There are “central markers”, being objects that announce a territorial claim, the territory radiating outward from it, as when sunglasses and lotion claim a beach chair, or a purse a seat in an airliner...There are “boundary markers”, objects that mark the line between two adjacent territories. The bar used in supermarket checkout counters to separate one customer's batch of articles from the next is an example...There are (if | may use the phrase) “ear markers”, that is, signatures embedded in an object to claim it as part of the possessionai territory of the signee, as when names are burned into sports equipment, livestock, and slaves....an object that is a part of a territory can also function as a marker of territory....personal effects, constituting a preserve in their own right, are frequently employed as markers; moving them or even touching them is something like touching their owner’s body, and such acts are avoided in many circumstances or performed with suitable circumspection. (Goffman, 1971, pp. 41-42) Within archeology, Tringham (1972) has described markers in prehistoric communities, and Renfrew (1983) has argued that the European megalithic monuments were territorial markers that coincided with the rise of social systems of political control. Within anthropology, Boas (1899), Ritschen (1954), Gusinde (1961) and Lévi-Strauss and Belmont (1963) have all reported on territory markers. Becker and Coniglio (1973), Ley and Cybriwsky (1974) and Vinsel, Brown, Altman and Foss (1980) have reported on personalization of territory as an indicator of successful assertion of self-identity and control of social spaces and resources. Becker (1973) demonstrated that personal objects can mark possession of a table in a library, and Schaffer and Sadowski (1975) demonstrated that they can mark possession of a table in a bar. Becker {1973) recommended that this be called jurisdiction rather than ownership of public areas. Property & Cross-Cultural Research : Historically, the motivation for cross-cultural research on property had two sources. First, in the natural science tradition of Aristotle and Montesquieu, property needed to be surveyed in all of its manifestations in order to reveal the common underlying principles. Second, in the natural law tradition of Cicero, Aquinas, and Locke, property needed to be examined in its natural state, prior to civilization in order to disentangle it from legal and cultural conventions. In a third tradition, an amalgamation and extension of the earlier two, originating perhaps with Rousseau and gaining predominance with Marx, the institution of private property needed to be studied in terms of its historical trajectory and cuitural evolution in order to understand its social functions. Ethnographic information on property eventually came to dominate nineteenth century debates on property theories. Ensor (1844) claims to have been the first to systematically examine the ethnographic accounts of property among primitive peoples. However, Morgan's

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