Doctoral Dissertation Research: Property, Law, and Markets

这个项目考察了后金融危机经济中的市场是如何通过法律干预重塑的，以及当抵押贷款成为干预的关键对象时，当地对房地产的理解如何影响这些干预。该项目的重点是财产收回，特别是审查地方法院的作用。法院是对新的财产关系进行竞争和授权的关键地方舞台。虽然贷款人可能会认为法院是收回房产的橡皮图章，但法官和登记员可能会对收回房屋犹豫不决。这项研究在财产收回的背景下探索新兴的法律和经济实践和理论，询问正式的法律机构和参与者如何定义财产、财产权和法律责任。该项目还考察了人们对财产的普遍理解，询问房主和企业主如何定义财产，以及对收回财产的反应。除了增进法律、市场、法院和经济之间相互作用的知识外，该项目还具有更广泛的影响，包括研究生培训。爱尔兰边境农村地区是研究项目的地点。正式的法律和市场往往不得不与重要的影子组织和经济体共存的爱尔兰边境县，已经成为一个充满活力的地区，北美对冲基金投资者从爱尔兰购买了数以千计的违约抵押贷款？S削弱了金融机构，在那里，农村房主在法庭上为他们辩护，以“主权公民”话语为辩护理由。这项研究将使用参与观察、直接观察、半结构化访谈和档案研究的民族志领域方法，分析经济复苏是如何在地方层面上以及在官僚登记、法院诉讼和实际收回的背景下实际展开的。

This project examines how markets in a post-financial crisis economy are remade through legal interventions and how, when mortgages are the key object for intervening, local understandings of property impact those interventions. The project focuses on property repossessions, examining, in particular, the role of local courts. Courts are a key local stage where new property relations are contested and authorized. While lenders may take courts for granted as rubber stamps for repossessions, judges and registrars may hesitate to repossess homes. Exploring emerging practices and theories of law and economy in the context of property repossessions, the research asks how formal legal institutions and players define property, property rights, and legal responsibility. The project also examines lay understandings of property, asking how homeowners and business owners define property and respond to repossessions. In addition to advancing knowledge on the interplay between law, markets, courts, and the economy, this project has broader impacts that include graduate student training.The rural Irish border region serves as the site for the research project. The Irish border counties, where formal law and markets have often had to coexist with significant shadow organizations and economies, have become a dynamic area where North American hedge fund investors have bought thousands of defaulting mortgages from Ireland?s weakened financial institutions, and where rural homeowners contest them in the courts with defenses that appeal to "sovereign citizen" discourse. The research will use ethnographic field methods of participant observation, direct observation, semi-structured interviews, and archival research to analyze how the economic recovery practically unwinds at the local level and in the context of bureaucratic registration, court proceedings, and actual repossessions.