Privatization (original) (raw)

Privatization is most often taken today to describe the process whereby a state‐owned enterprise is transferred to private ownership. Evoking long‐standing debates concerning the morality and social consequences of enclosing the commons and the responsibility of states for ensuring the welfare of citizens, privatization provides an especially apt lens for bringing into focus the broad sweep of social, political, and economic history—in particular the relationship between states, corporations, and markets. At the same time, the concept permits anthropologists to interrogate uncertainties in the alignment of property, law, and morality that have accompanied neoliberalism and globalization, advances in biotechnology, and the emergence of a new information commons.