When things become property : land reform, authority, and value in postsocialist Europe and Asia / Thomas Sikor, Stefan Dorondel, Johannes Stahl and Phuc Xuan To.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Part I: Agriculture - Negotiating Property and Value -- Part I Introduction -- Chapter 1: Transnational Migration, Ethnicity, and Property in Albania -- Chapter 2: Livelihood Traditions, Worker-Peasants, and Peasant Entrepreneurs in Romania -- Chapter 3: Modernity, Fantasies, and Property in Vietnam -- Part II: Forests - Contesting Property and Authority -- Part II Introduction -- Chapter 4: Forests, State, and Custom in Albania -- Chapter 5: Property, Predators, and Patrons in Romania -- Chapter 6: Land Allocation, Loggers, and Lawmakers in Vietnam -- Conclusion

Governments have conferred ownership titles to many citizens throughout the world in an effort to turn things into property. Almost all elements of nature have become the target of property laws, from the classic preoccupation with land to more ephemeral material, such as air and genetic resources. When Things Become Property interrogates the mixed outcomes of conferring ownership by examining postsocialist land and forest reforms in Albania, Romania and Vietnam, and finds that property reforms are no longer, if they ever were, miracle tools available to governments for refashioning economies, politics or environments.