Day 1: Friday, February 28
The Global Commodification of Land (Public Symposium)
Location: MIT List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA
Opening Remarks (4pm)
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Founder, Displacement Research and Action Network, MIT
Eran Ben-Joseph, Head, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT
Olivier DeSchutter, University of Louvain & UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food
Opening Plenary: The Global Commodification of Land (4:30pm)
Philip McMichael, Cornell University
Saskia Sassen, Columbia University
Ruth Hall, University of the Western Cape
Duncan Kennedy, Harvard Law School
Chair: Balakrishnan Rajagopal, MIT
Evening Reception (630pm)
Day 2: Saturday, March 1, 2014
Rethinking Property from Below (Closed Paper Workshop)
Location: MIT Vannevar Bush Room (10-105)
Refreshments served (8am)
Opening Remarks (8:30am)
Olivier DeSchutter, University of Louvain
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, MIT
Panel 2: Social Mobilization and Civil Disobedience (9:00)
An Ansom, University of Louvain; Access to land and land conflict dynamics in the Democratic Republic of Congo: From resistance against the legal framework to juridical innovation
Phil Thompson, MIT; Race and Property: The Role Of Race In Shaping Concepts Of Property in the US Context
Sergio Sauer, University of Brasilia; Land and territory: social mobilization and struggles for land and territorial rights in Brazil
Sonia Katyal, Fordham Law School (with Eduardo Penalver, University of Chicago Law School); Urban Outlaws
Respondent: Hanoch Dagan, Tel-Aviv University Law School
Chair: Balakrishnan Rajagopal, MIT
(Coffee Break)
Panel 3: The Commons (11am)
Hanoch Dagan and Tsilly Dagan, Tel-Aviv University Law School, Facilitating the Commons Inside Out
Michael Heller, Columbia Law School, The Role of Property Right Innovation,
Antonio Azuela, Universidad Autónoma de México, The Contradictions of Inalienability: Social Exclusion and Resource Governance in the Mexican Ejido,
Balakrishnan Rajagopal and Alpen Sheth, MIT, Beyond Commodification: Bhoodhan, Land Reform, and Metaphysics of Property in India
Respondent: Rashmi Dyal-Chand, Northeastern University Law School
Lunch-time (1pm)
Talk by Miloon Kothari, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and Martin Luther King Visiting Fellow, MIT
Panel 4: Peasant Rights and Land Rights (2pm)
Jun Borras, International Institute of Social Studies, A land sovereignty alternative? Towards a People's (Counter)Enclosure
Priscilla Claeys, University of Louvain, Right to Land and Control Over Territories: How Peasants Movements are Claiming and Creating New Rights
Henry Thomas, Via Campesina, Why Rights of Peasants?
Respondent: Ruth Hall, University of the Western Cape
Chair: Lawrence Susskind, MIT
(Coffee Break)
Conversation: Rethinking the Scales of Land Governance (4pm)
Neil Brenner, Harvard Graduate School of Design.
César Rodriguez Garavito, University of Los Andes
Closing Remarks (5pm)
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, MIT