Ways of owning: Towards an economic sociology of privatisation

Economic sociology has been preoccupied with the institution of markets, to the relative neglect of ownership. It has inherited certain technical and governmental problematics regarding that which can or cannot be internalised within the market price system, leading to the assumption that the ‘social’ or the ‘public’ is a type of empirical externality. But by shifting attention towards institutions of ownership, the public and the private come to appear as primarily normative appeals, used to challenge and justify the drawing of boundaries in economic life. Boundaries are judged for their justice, as well as for their empirical efficacy. Adopting a pragmatist approach, this paper outlines three possible ‘orders of appropriation’ which can be appealed to when justifying and criticising privatisation in economic situations: the socialist, the neoliberal and the liberal. Beyond any scientific or technical account of property, each of these offers an ‘ultimate’ basis on which to view ownership, according to different and incompatible philosophical anthropologies.

► Economic sociology is preoccupied by providing ‘social’ analyses of markets, neglecting property rights.
► Greater reflexivity in economic sociology would lead it to consider the normative division of the ‘public’ and the ‘private’.
► The delineation of private property is inherently ambiguous, and open to multiple normative interpretations.
► Immanent critical theories are at work in how private property is criticised and justified by actors in economic situations.