Editorial - Property Rights through Theory and Practice

University Centre for Alternative Economics, University of Kerala).The work presented at this workshop reflected an interdisciplinary engagement with law, very much a product of the affiliations of the participants with CSLG as faculty or students-the conception and work behind this collection has been generated by the thought processes that have taken place over many years at CSLG.It was strongly felt by all those who participated in the workshop that they wanted to share the collective energy felt at the workshop, motivating the attempt to gather this collection of essays.The energy of the event was not just the synergy of fellowship but also an expression of a collective intent to highlight practice in conjunction with theory, that is, to speak back to theory, enriching it with empirical interaction.There is a fluidity to the notion of property, and such fluidity can be understood when we see it in operation on the ground.For such an endeavour, the locational emphasis of this collection is immediately apparent-a huge empirical diversity in relation to property can be found all over the Indian subcontinent.There are many varying contexts within which issues pertaining to property rights come to the fore, starting from constitutional interpretations of property to the expression of local norms that govern property on the ground.By bringing together these diverse experiences and contexts, the overall aim of this volume is to see if we can better understand and comment on the role of property and its governance in the constitution of economic, social, and political life.This diversity of experience, which is interesting in itself, is also a cause for those contributing to this volume to engage empirical experience with theories of property so as to invigorate and creatively engage with conceptual issues.Thus, here the locational emphasis does not signify a straightforward conversation between the empirical material and received conceptual apparatuses, but rather it is an attempt to use the opportunity to engage with conceptual frames from a locational perspective, somewhat in the spirit suggested by Arif, "to see how encounters among a diversity of locations, expressive lives and experiences connect in messy, non-hierarchical, uncharted but resonant and associative ways, such that they insist on destabilising dominant concept or modes of theorising" (Arif, 2015, p. 53).All the contributions aim to do this in varying degrees with some concentrating on theoretical or conceptual concerns, while others are more empirically oriented, but none of them are devoid of the conversation between theory and the empirical.Additionally, all the contributions share