The establishment of modern law and, in particular, of the notion of human rights, in the context of the liberal revolutions of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, was accompanied by the formation of the various fields of legal knowledge that shaped the experience of modernity. This process unfolded at differentiated rhythms of change, continuity and resistance, especially considering that it did not involve peaceful transformations or processes of consensual negotiation, but rather intense social, political, economic and cultural conflicts. In these conflicts, different conceptions of the traditions, customs and rights of peoples clashed, particularly around the affirmation and redefinition of property rights.
Within this framework, the symposium aims to present and discuss research in History and the Social Sciences that addresses, in the American territories and in the national states that emerged from the disintegration of the European colonial empires, the disputes, conflicts and — frequently violent — construction of consensus around the multiple conceptions of property rights and their relationship with human rights. It proposes to examine the various dimensions of property, from land, territories, nature, waters and mineral resources to cultural, material and intangible heritage, as well as the various legal regimes linked to intellectual property, technology, innovation and copyright.
The symposium will give priority to theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions that analyze the relationships among property, human rights, traditions, customs and social conflicts, considering, among others, the following thematic axes:
1) Rural properties and agrarian issues, considering conflicts over land, territorial rights, agrarian reforms, collective property, the rights of traditional communities, and the various forms of access to and use of natural resources.
2) Urban properties, popular housing, production and labor, with an emphasis on urbanization processes, disputes over the right to the city, housing, land regularization, labor, and socio-spatial inequalities from a human-rights perspective.
3) Property and cultural heritage, addressing the tensions between public and private property, memory, identity, preservation of tangible and intangible heritage, cultural rights, and heritage-making processes.
4) Intellectual property, technology and innovation, examining debates on copyright, patents, the circulation of knowledge, traditional knowledge, knowledge appropriation, access to technology, and cognitive justice within the framework of human rights.
Likewise, the symposium seeks to promote reflection on the primary sources used to study these issues — such as legislation, judicial proceedings, notarial and cadastral records, administrative documents, cartography, the press, correspondence, travel accounts, oral sources and iconographic collections, among others — as well as on the social, collective and institutional actors involved in these processes. Special attention will be paid to the role played by indigenous and native peoples, traditional communities, social movements, public authorities, popular and community leaders, intellectuals, civil organizations, churches, and the states themselves as protagonists in the struggles for the recognition, regulation and expansion of property rights and human rights.
