The Geopolitics of Real Estate

A historical analysis of the geopolitics of real estate with settler-colonialism on the one side and the rise of über-wealthy foreign real estate investors on the other.

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Individual foreign investment in Western nation states is a long-standing geopolitical issue. The expansion of the middle class in BRICS and Asian countries, and their increased activity in Western real estate markets as foreign investors, have introduced new and revived existing cultural and geopolitical sensitivities.

In this book, Dallas Rogers develops a new history of foreign real estate investment by mapping the movement of human and financial capital over more than four centuries. The book argues the reconfiguration of Asian geopolitical power has ruptured the conceptual landscape for understanding international land and real estate relations. Drawing on assemblage theories (Latour, Deleuze and Guattari), assemblage analytical tactics (Sassen and Ong) and discursive media theories (Kittler and Foucault) a series of vignettes of land and real estate crisis are presented. The book demonstrates how foreign land claimers and global real estate professionals colonise, subvert and act beyond the governance structures of settler-societies to facilitate new types of capital circulation and accumulation around the world.