Paper proposals are invited for the workshop on Private Property: Postsocialist Promises and Experiences to be held in Bucharest on June 15-16, 2007. The workshop will be organized by the Junior Research Group on Postsocialist Land Relations at Humboldt University, Berlin, the Junior Research Group on Property Relations at Bucharest University, and New Europe College. It aims to facilitate a critical assessment of private property in Central and Eastern Europe by comparing the promises of private property with actual experiences as regards to the nature of postsocialist property relations, the factors influencing them, and their interrelations with economic growth, democracy, social equity, and environmental protection. This comparison will yield preliminary maps of property politics, policies and practices in the region.

We invite contributions from anthropology, geography, political science, sociology, and related fields that address questions about the nature of ‘private property’, the socio-political actors and factors having influence on postsocialist property regimes, the links between postsocialist property relations and processes of social differentiation and class formation. We also encourage empirical inquiries of how property and state authority influenced each other, and how changes in property are linked with economic and environmental performance in urban and rural landscapes.

Please send paper proposals (ranging from 500 to 1,000 words) to Stefan Dorondel (s.dorondel@agrar.hu-berlin.de) or Damiana Otoiu (dotoiu@ulb.ac.be) by January 15th, 2007. Further information on the workshop is available from Dorondel or Otoiu, as well as under http://www.agrar.hu-berlin.de/struktur-en/institute-en/wisola-en/fg-en/plr-en/.