Call for Paper | Dossier: Politically Motivated Property Damage (v.15, n.2, 2024)

Foto da estátua de Manuel de Borba Gato em chamas, em julho de 2021, de Rafael Vilela
rafaelvilela.visura.co
@piravilela

Organization: Bianca Tavolari

The question of the limits of violence is at the center of debates on civil disobedience and the consequent violation of established legal norms for political reasons. Strict positions in favor of non-violence do not differentiate between harm committed against individuals and property damage; both, regardless of their targets and consequences, would be far from what could be characterized as peaceful resistance. Other positions argue that the difference should lead to distinct consequences in the realm of public justification and also in the realm of law: while harm to individuals could hardly be considered part of a strategy of civil disobedience, transgressions against property regulations could be part of a repertoire linked to uncivil disobedience, as defended by Candice Delmas in A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil. When conventional non-violent strategies fail to produce the desired social and political transformations, the author argues that serious injustices can justify resorting to extreme actions, with room for the use of violence.

In his paper Politically Motivated Property Damage, with a translation into Portuguese published ahead of print in Direito e Práxis, William Scheuerman discusses the difference between harm to individuals and harm to property to provide justification for politically motivated property damage within a framework of civil disobedience, rather than outside it, thereby expanding the range of behaviors that could be understood as non-violent. Inspired by the thinking of Martin Luther King Jr., Scheuerman creates a typology that distinguishes between symbolic property damage, disruptive property damage, and property seizures. The typology is established based on the potential consequences that property damage can have on individuals, blurring the boundaries of a strict differentiation between the two types of harm or violence. The vandalization and toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colton by anti-racist movements in Bristol, England, is illustrative of the first category. The second typology involves property damage characterized as sabotage, including the destruction of company servers by hacktivists, the destruction of polluting infrastructures in the name of the climate agenda, or the burning of police stations by Black Lives Matter activists. Finally, the last typology encompasses looting and riots organized for political reasons, in which goods are seized by protesters.

Protest and property are intertwined in various ways. This dossier invites the submission of works that discuss the variations, implications, and limits of the concept of property damage for political motivation. We welcome article proposals that articulate demonstrations and property rights from an empirical perspective, including case studies or comparative analyses, whether quantitative or qualitative. Empirical studies on legal processes and decisions regarding these acts, which examine how legal categories in civil, criminal, administrative, and procedural law are mobilized and contested in the context of protests, are also expected in this dossier. Papers on protests that do not have property as a central category but enter the legal arena through the mobilization of legal concepts such as possession and property are also welcome. Theoretical studies on the intersections between property rights and protest, within the framework of recent discussions on civil disobedience and characterizations of what can be understood as violence, are also anticipated.

Proposals should be submitted to [danoapropriedade@gmail.com] in the format below by November 15, 2023. The publication schedule for the dossier can be found at the end of this call.

Proposals should include:

• Name, email, ORCID, qualifications, and institutional affiliations of the authors.
• A summary of up to 1000 words that clearly indicates the work’s subject, hypotheses, the method to be used in the research, expected conclusions, and the research’s contribution to the field and the dossier’s proposal.
• A provisional structure of the text’s topics, including a list of possible cases, experiences, or theoretical proposals that will be analyzed.

Submissions in Portuguese, English, or Spanish will be accepted.

Timetable:

1. Release of the call for papers: October 2023
2. Deadline for abstract submissions: 15/11/2023
3. Editor’s response regarding acceptance and comments: 12/01/2023
4. Deadline for complete article submissions: 28/02/2024
5. Return of manuscripts to authors after evaluation: 15/03/2024
6. Submission of final revised versions by authors: 30/03/2024
7. Publication: 05/06/2024