Rights, Worth and Distribution Patterns of Land Ownership: An Ethnography of State Data Infrastructures in Germany
Felicitas Sommer
My PhD-Project investigates, how land ownership rights are made as objects in state data and document infrastructures. Conceptions of ownership are co-produced with land registries, cadastres and farm statistics. In the light of a rising debate on land market (in)transparency in Germany in the recent years, I aim at understanding how conceptions of a desirable land distribution and images of societal-land-relations are negotiated. The production of knowledge requires an assessment of what is fact, what is necessary, and what is socially desirable. In the case of data on agrarian structures, this entails implicit assumptions about what landed property is and how it is and should be managed and distributed. The organization of a sustainable and desirable agricultural system has become a contested subject in politics. Despite mounting criticism related to trans-regional ownership concentration and non-agricultural investors entering agriculture, I argue that knowledge production and policy fail to grasp a financialised, globalised agricultural industry so far as well as challenges, the ‘traditional’ agricultural sector faces. In my field research from 2017 to 2019, I have participated in workshops and meetings with representatives of local courts, ministries, statistical offices, the German parliament, lobby groups, activists, and scientific institutes. I have investigated political debates and legal cultures around farm and land ownership data, particularly the land registry and cadastral offices, to trace the fissures between legal text and practice and the influence of conceptions of legitimate ownership rights, especially regarding data protection.
Duration
2017 - 2022
Supervisor
Prof. Dr. Olaf Zenker
Prof. Dr. Jörg Niewöhner