Why is the topic of ownership worth studying?

The concepts of possession, ownership and property play a fundamental role for human behaviour, social interactions and economic transactions. There are numerous resources from various disciplines dealing with exciting and surprising findings on ownership, which are now bundled and curated in the new special POP collection.

To get a first impression of the physical side of the POP (Possession, Ownership & Property) collection and to find out why world-leading experts (Floyd Rudmin, Russ Belk, Ori Friedman, Michael Heller, Jennifer Inauen, Carey Morewedge, Joann Peck, Jon Pierce, and Federico Rossano) think that ownership is an interesting topic to study and what research finding on the issue surprised them the most watch this video.

We present: The POP collection

We are happy to announce the opening of the POP (Possession, Ownership & Property) collection at WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business), which was initiated and curated by the Institute for Marketing & Consumer Research (m.core).

The POP collection is an evolving collection. It builds on a donation of an abundance of multi-disciplinary titles by Professor Floyd Rudmin (University of Tromsø), a prominent pioneer in the field.

Thank you, Floyd!

The printed books can be found in the WU Library. The digital collection contains bibliographical information on these books as well as numerous other important contributions in this field.

Search the digital collection according to your interests: HERE you find the link to the Possession, Ownership, Property Collection – Vienna University of Economics and Business.

It’s the best time of the year to say thank you – to all of you and to Floyd Rudmin, in particular!

This time of the year is always a good chance to step back from our busy schedules and take some time to express our gratitude toward significant people in our lives. We have very good reasons to do so this year! Besides thanking you all for your interest in and support of this blog, we want to express our deepest gratitude to Floyd Rudmin (University of Tromsø). He has made us and by extension all of you a truly unique pre-Christmas gift.

Floyd, a prominent pioneer and incomparable maverick in the field of ownership, has generously donated his invaluable and truly interdisciplinary collection of books on ownership and possession to m.core (Institute for Marketing and Consumer Research) at WU Vienna. We see ourselves as stewards of this treasure and are doing our best to preserve and extend this resource and to make it accessible to as many as possible. Floyd’s collections consists of over 130 books and numerous copies of book chapters and journal articles. Throughout his decades-spanning career he has meticulously gathered titles across a variety of disciplines ranging from anthropology over psychology, sociology, and history to law and political sciences.

We are very happy and thankful that this true treasure of literature on ownership has now found a new home at WU. The collection can now be found at a separate location in the WU library. We are sure that this will be a great opportunity for the entire community to visit our university in Vienna and have a look for yourselves at this marvelous collection – which we are continuously growing (further suggestions are more than welcome!). In addition we are trying to digitize everything where the rights allow doing so and we will host a link to the full collection as soon as this is searchable.

In the spirit of the days, we could not stress enough how great it is when “mine” becomes “ours” and eventually “everyone’s”. Thank you so much Floyd for your generous gesture and this intellectually rewarding transfer of ownership! We would like to invite all blog readers to freely spread the word about it and help us grow this collection.

We wish you all a Merry Holiday Season and a joyful, inspiring and fulfilling New Year 2018!

May we introduce: Floyd Webster Rudmin

“I was trying to find the cultural and cognitive foundations of possession and ownership.”

We have yet another addition to our Featured section to announce. This time we had the great pleasure to chat with a true legend of ownership research: psychologist Floyd Webster Rudmin. With his diverse background in philosophy, audiology, social psychology, law and business he managed to approach the topic of ownership and possession from a variety of different angles. The entrance to psychology of ownership and possession, however, was via political philosophy, not via consumer behavior nor via law. He was particularly inspired by the debate of communal vs. private ownership throughout history (Plato’s analysis and Aristotle’s evidence in the 5th century BC, holocultural sociology (sampling cultures) in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and saber-rattling nuclear missiles in the 1950s-1980s).

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In his featured interview, which you can read here, Floyd talks about his personal path, important works that inspired his career, as well as his opinion on the future of ownership. Click here for the full interview.