What does ownership mean and how can ownership be structured to design a more democratic economy? We tend to think of ownership as being about possession—something is yours, or it’s mine, or perhaps if we are a group, it’s ours. But it is much more than that. Ownership is a bundle of rights—social, individual, and collective—which means its boundaries and intersections vary from place to place.

Today, people are questioning how those rights are being distributed—from the workplace to new ecosystems of institutions—and reclaiming ownership of labor, identities, cultures, and communities. It’s time to take a new look at ownership, work, and labor as movements mobilize new narratives to achieve economic justice and social transformation. We have curated articles from the NPQ archive to explore these ideas, which also animate our summer 2022 economic justice issue.