Please join us for a discussion of Brenna Bhandar’s new book, Colonial Lives of Property, with:
Nick Blomley (Simon Fraser University)
Irina Ceric (Kwantlen Polytechnic University)
Glen Coulthard (University of British Columbia
Brenna Bhandar (SOAS, University of London)
Chair: Davina Bhandar (Athabasca University)

What are the colonial origins of modern property law? How have modern laws of property emerged in conjunction with racial subjectivities? In Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land and Racial Regimes of Ownership (Duke University Press, 2018), Brenna Bhandar examines both historical cases and ongoing processes of settler colonialism in Canada, Australia, and Israel and Palestine, and shows how the colonial appropriation of indigenous lands depends upon ideologies of European racial superiority as well as upon legal narratives that equate civilized life with English concepts of property. The solution to these enduring racial and economic inequities requires developing a new political imaginary of property in which freedom is connected to shared practices of use and community rather than individual possession.

Hosted by the Centre For Policy Studies on Culture and Communities, FCAT, SFU; co-sponsored by the Centre For Comparative Muslim Studies, SFU.

SFU acknowledges the Squamish, Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, Katzie, and Kwikwetlem peoples on whose traditional territories our three campuses stand.