Decolonial Comparative Property Law

Decolonial Comparative Property Law: a Brazilian edition in 2024

The DeCoLa programme will be running its third Decolonial Comparative Law Workshop series in November 2024. This special edition has mobilised a consortium of university professors from all over Brazil.

The result is the organisation of two events in Brazil: one workshop in Brasília from 4-5 November 2024; followed by a Spring School in Salvador from 7-9 November 2024.

For this third edition, the programme intends to take place in the Global South with partners from previous editions in Brazil. Besides, the aim is two-fold, to:

• advance scientific contributions in the field of decolonial comparative property law, and
• support the development of a decolonial comparative legal community in Brazil and South America, at large.

The overall theme of this 2024 edition is decolonial comparative property law. Both events will address issues related to the different forms of manifestation of the right to ownership of land, water, forms of life (fauna and flora) and other elements related to nature (minerals, air, etc.) from a comparative and decolonial perspective.

Decolonial Comparative Property Law Workshop Conference, Brasília
– November 4-5, 2024

The Decolonial Comparative Property Law Workshop Conference in Brasília will take place at the Universidade Católica de Brasília on 4-5 November 2024. The workshop aims to facilitate an exchange between legal scholars of different disciplines, together with activists within the field of Decolonial Comparative Property Law. Faithful to the programme’s commitment to pluriversality, participants and location of research stem from a diversity of regions, from Indonesia to Mali, passing by Italy and Barbados.

Following a call for papers, 8 articles from 11 coauthors have been selected and reviewed on themes as diverse as energy law, water as a national property in Indonesia, or comparative Afrodescendent and Indigenous property law. Papers will be further discussed and contrasted by peers (other authors), anthropologists, performance artists, historians, and environmental specialists. The main languages spoken throughout the workshop are English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. The use of simultaneous translation will allow for each participant to express themselves in their own language.

The two partners of this event are DeCoLa (Decolonial Comparative Law) from the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg (Germany) and DECLEN (Decolonization and Comparing Legal Experiences Network) hosted by the Universidade Católica de Brasília (Brazil).

Decolonial Comparative Property Law Spring School, Salvador
– November 7-9, 2024

The Decolonial Comparative Property Law Spring School will be held at the Federal University of Bahia (Salvador, Brazil) on 7-9 November 2024. The Spring school aims to bring together academic community and civil society to explore contemporary issues within the field of Property Law from a decolonial and comparative perspective. The programme includes roundtables, dialogues, and seminars on themes as varied as decolonial rural and urban practices in Brazil, (dis)continuities of property legal heritage in Palestine/Israel, or, customary land law and the nationalisation of land in Cameroon.

Participation is open to anyone interested in discussing and deepening their understanding of decolonial approaches to comparative property law. The school’s working languages are English, Portuguese, and French, for which simultaneous translation will be provided. There is no participation fee.

Applications are still open until 22 September 2024: https://events.mpipriv.de/b?p=decola-springschool-2024-en

Why Brazil?

Historically, decoloniality (decolonialidad(e)) has emerged in the 1990s from Latin American interpretations of Frantz Fanon's call for epistemic liberation. The concept was coined by Anibal Quijano and has then given rise to prolific publications from Maria Lugones and Walter Mignolo (Argentina), Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (Bolivia), Ramón Grosfoguel and Nelson Maldonado-Torres (Porto Rico), Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Portugal). Brazilian lawyers then combined decolonial readings of law with existing movements such as direito achado na rua (law from the streets) to proclaim o giro decolonial (decolonial turn).

Organising the event in South America not only complies with the principle of locating research where knowledge is (Donna Haraway's situated knowledges), but also pays tribute to the origins of decolonial legal theory.

Who in Brazil?

The workshop and spring school are coordinated by a programme committee, which includes: André Nunes Chaib (University of Maastricht), Flávia Carlet (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul – UFRGS), Karina Macedo Gomes Fernandes (Centro Universitário Ritter dos Reis – UniRitter), Luiz Eduardo de Lacerda Abreu (Universidade de Brasília–UnB), and Tatiana Emilia Dias Gomes (Universidade Federal da Bahia–UFBA). Anna Lyvia Ribeiro (Real Estate Law Special Commission) is a former member of the programme committee.

Our partner in Brasília is the Decolonization and Comparing Legal Experiences Network (DECLEN). DECLEN is a scholarly network co-run by Deo Campos Dutra and Guilherme Roman Borges (Universidade Católica de Brasília).