Decolonising Property: Exploring Ethics, Land, and Time, through Housing Interventions in Contemporary Australia

Abstract

The idea of property is a fundamental and foundational component of modern industrialised economies and yet, as a growing body of work shows, property is far from settled as a concept, or as a set series of relationships—whether between institutions, humans, places, and/or other species. Property systems are part of emergent, complex socioecological systems, reflecting and manifesting social and political phenomena, and asserting particular forms of citizen/self as acceptable, preferable and dominant. Predominant Western understandings of property rely on, enable, and anticipate increases in property value over time, reflecting particular conceptualisations and experiences of time shaped by Judeo—Christian teleological narratives in which time moves towards a perfect state that ironically remains perpetually imminent. This essay is concerned with tracing the ontological baggage of predominant understandings of property and time and exploring the terrain of their Others, as well as exploring the shifts in relationships between these in a decolonising and postmodern Australian context. This paper will reveal some of the diversity of what and how societies think about property and time, to suggest we may be starting—albeit 21—to acknowledge and engage with multiple and complex iterations of these.