As formerly community-owned land and natural resources are privatized and titling schemes proliferate, Property Rights from Below questions the trend towards treating land as a commodity and explores alternatives to the Western model.

Olivier De Schutter is Professor at the University of Louvain (UCL), Belgium, and at SciencesPo (Paris). He is also a member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. He was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food between 2008 and 2014 and has been a visiting professor at Columbia University and at Berkeley University, USA.

Balakrishnan Rajagopal is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, where he is the head of the International Development Group at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the founding director of the Program on Human Rights and Justice and the Displacement Research and Action Network. He is an active member and one of the founders of the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) network of scholars.

1. Property Rights From Below: An Introduction to the Debate

Olivier De Schutter and Balakrishnan Rajagopal

Part I: The Global Commodification of Land and Competition for Resources

2. When Primitive Accumulation Inhabits Advanced Systems

Saskia Sassen

3. Land Grab Governance and the Crisis of Market Rule

Philip McMichael

4. From transgression to normative innovation: Land conflict resolution in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo
An Ansoms, with Emery Mudinga, Aymar Nyenyezi Bisoka, Giuseppe Davide Cioffo and Klara Claessens

Part II: Social Mobilization and the Counter-Movement

5. Forging a Single Proletariat
J. Phillip Thompson

6. Urban Squatters

Sonia Katyal and Eduardo Peñalver

7. Land and territory: struggles for land and territorial rights in Brazil

Sergio Sauer and Luís Felipe Perdigão de Castro

8. The Right to Land and Territory: New Human Right and Collective Action Frame

Priscilla Claeys

Part III: Shaping Alternatives: from Commodification to Rebuilding the Commons

9. Facilitating the Commons Inside Out

Hanoch Dagan and Tsilly Dagan

10. Urban Commons, Property, and the Right to the City

Sheila R. Foster

11. When Land is Inalienable. Territorial transformations and peasants' property rights in Mexico

Antonio Azuela

12. Conclusion: The Revival of the "Commons" and the Redeifinition of Property Rights

Olivier De Schutter and Balakrishnan Rajagopal