Dr Katy Wells, Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship
Renting: Justice and Limited Sovereignty
Renting is a property relation never far from the news. Frequently featuring in UK headlines are “Generation Rent,” young adults who rent housing because they can’t afford to buy their own home. Housing is not the only topic of interest.
A recent BBC headline asked: “Will we soon be renting rather than buying our clothes?”
The associated article features the Beijing start-up, YCloset, which rents out women’s fashion.
Renting is also widely discussed as part of the so-called “sharing” economy.
In discussions such as these, renting is a form of technologically-enabled “access-based consumption,” a means of accessing goods contrasted with individual ownership.
We engage in this form of consumption when we rent my clothing from an online rental company or when we sign up to a car-sharing service that lets us access rental vehicles using an App.
More broadly, if we are concerned with issues of justice, how should we view a society in which people have come to rent a greater proportion of their possessions? Despite this attention, there has been little serious examination of the topic of renting in political and legal philosophy.
There are, however, important questions for political and legal philosophers prompted by reflection on renting. Property is often thought to protect our interest in autonomy, our interest in carrying out our plans and projects. It is often assumed that ownership rights protect this interest.
What contribution can renting goods make to individual autonomy?
Dr Katy Wells's Fellowship “Renting: Justice and Limited Sovereignty” will offer an in-depth exploration of the relationship between renting and justice. It will explore the ways in which rental markets are important components of a just society, and the ways in which rental markets need to be regulated in order to be understood as “just.” In doing this, it aims to help navigate our sometimes conflicting and ambivalent views on this property relation.