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The Loss of Property Rights and the Construction of Legal Consciousness in Early Socialist R omania (1950–1965)
Author(s) -
Şerban Mihaela
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
law and society review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1540-5893
pISSN - 0023-9216
DOI - 10.1111/lasr.12103
Subject(s) - legal consciousness , ideology , consciousness , hegemony , property rights , property (philosophy) , law , power (physics) , sociology , state (computer science) , political science , order (exchange) , law and economics , business , politics , epistemology , philosophy , physics , algorithm , quantum mechanics , finance , computer science
What happens to legal and rights consciousness when rights previously protected are taken away? In this article, I investigate the process of contesting urban housing nationalization in R omania in the early 1950s in order to understand how the loss of property rights led to new hybrid types of legal consciousness. I find that the construction of socialist legal consciousness was grounded in the interaction between the legally constituted selves of former owners and state bureaucrats who drew from distinct legal and property rights ideologies. This process underscores continuities in legal consciousness even under drastic regime changes, which in turn has implications for the construction of new hegemonic legalities and power regimes. The article is based on extensive document and archival research.