Chapter 1: Why “Property” - Foreign Military Studies Office - U.S. Army

purpose of examining conflicts--if there is no complaint, there is noconflict. Apt consideration of ownership conflict incorporates andreconciles potential incompatibilities among diverse systems, but thatwisdom hardly disables the applicability of property theory. 19 Thenotion of property as an infinitely divisible basket of rights and dutiesencompasses any cultural variation. Some perhaps purely Westernlegal jargon appears in the explanation of the model, and as Mr. DeSoto allows,“This is not to say that culture doesn’t count. All peoplein the world have specific preferences, skills, andpatterns of behavior that can be regarded as cultural.The challenge is fathoming which of these traits arereally ingrained, unchangeable identity of a people andwhich are determined by economic and legalconstraints….Legal property empowers individuals inany culture, and I doubt that property per se directlycontradicts any major culture.” 20I would go further than Mr. De Soto to say that property per seoffends no cultural schema, major or otherwise, and that even the lessvenerable cultural traits are not offended by the prospect of identifyingand formalizing rights. Property statutes, registry systems and realestate markets reflect the development of ownership rules with aWestern cultural stamp, marked by the application of fraud-controltechnologies. While these characteristics may be absent elsewhere,why would this suggest that accuracy, precision and transparency in theallocation of rights and duties be a disrespectful cultural imposition?The scope of personal or private property, forms of tenancy and degreeof communal ownership will all have their relationship to and influenceon cultural norms. Unintended consequences of changes in the forms19 The most vigorous theories of international human rights, as well as mostgeopolitical theories, are Western inventions. It would be picayune to accuse aproperty interpretation of human rights or of geopolitics as being ethnocentric. Theterms of reference are no more or less universal than the term being questioned.20 Hernando De Soto, supra, p. 226.27