November 20, 2025 
Multistudio Offices, New Orleans

LaShandra Sullivan (Northwestern University), Kregg Hetherington (Concordia University), Jamie Cross (University of Glasgow), and Andrea Ballestero (USC)

The Ethnography Studio invites you to a workshop on “Property + Materiality,” to be held during the American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA. The workshop will take place on November 20th from 9:30am to 12:30pm in collaboration with Multistudio, an architecture studio with offices in New Orleans (Lower Garden District). Conversations during the workshop will feature LaShandra Sullivan (Northwestern University), Kregg Hetherington (Concordia University), Jamie Cross (University of Glasgow), and Andrea Ballestero (USC). 

What is the form of property? Classical liberal theories were built on the premise that land was transformed into property through the act of labor. For some theorists, like John Locke, this depended on the construction of a potential individual-owner with the “right” body and subjectivity–i.e., white, male, European, and abled. But property has always been socially negotiated in a variety of ways. Some regimes of ownership indeed depend on the idea of individual rights, while many others conceive of collective ownership and blur property boundaries in their abstract and material senses.  

In this workshop, participants will engage with the topic of property, within and beyond the liberal regime, by attending to its material register. Where does property exist? In a thing or as an idea? What are the values, assumptions, or benefits of ownership? We invite participants to think about property outside lines and borders, in a thoroughly material way. Everyday examples of how people live with and against property—such as the use of vacant space, fruit trees hanging over a neighbor’s yard, fences as limits, or commons held both publicly and privately—invite us to think about different forms of appropriating and caring for the physical world. Moreover, they invite us to think about how appropriation and care can relate to each other. Questions of property are thus also questions about how we imagine, project, and make actionable the material register of collective life: that is, how we sculpt and mold materials, from putting something in your pocket to affixing a “Private Property” sign. In this workshop, we will investigate how the materiality of property mobilizes objects, spaces, and infrastructures into relations of ownership, access, and exclusion.

Before the workshop, selected participants will submit:

1. A brief write-up (1 to 2 pages single-spaced) on how the relationship between materiality and property appears in their research. 
2. A multimodal object or a thinking device (photograph, diagram, map, database, etc.) related to the theme of property, broadly conceived. The above write-up should include a description or explanation of this object or thinking device and how it helps or challenges theorizations of property in a material sense.

Timeline:

1. Application Deadline: October 27
2. Notification of selected participants: November 3
3. Deadline to submit write-up + object for workshop: November 12 
4. Workshop: November 20, 9:30am – 12:30pm. Lunch will be provided after the event. Location: 1501 Religious St Suite A, New Orleans, LA 70130.

To apply:

Please submit a) a one-paragraph bio indicating career stage, b) a one-paragraph description of your research, and c) a one-paragraph proposal of how you will engage the themes of property and materiality. You can submit these materials via this google form by October 27.

Please contact ethnographystudio@gmail.com with any questions. This workshop is supported by the EMERGE project.