PROPERTY In so many ways property is a category of heightened importance just now. Property has become newly strange as it expands into unfamiliar places and develops novel kinds. The exchange of communism for capitalism in Eastern Europe; the claim of property rights over their own culture by indigenous peoples in Melanesia; and the ownership of bodily tissue significant for biomedical research in New Guinea are among the property issues that have been aired in CSSH (see Katherine Verdery, “Faith, Hope, and Caritas in the Land of the Pyramids: Romania, 1990–1994,” 1995:625–69; Simon Harrison, “From Prestige Goods to Legacies: Property and the Objectification of Culture in Melanesia,” 2000:662–79; and Warwick Anderson, “The Possession of Kuru: Medical Science and Biocolonial Exchange,” 2000:713–44). In our first two articles property under colonialism and after slavery come under scrutiny.