Claims about European identity rest on a Lockean theory of property and cultivation.

Evidence

What is the essence of that civilizational identity? Trevor-Roper reminds his readers that most of its ideas and many of its techniques entered European civilization from outside. The things that belong to European civilization, therefore, are those that were taken up and creatively worked on by “Europe.” Productive elaboration becomes an essential characteristic of Europe as a civilization. This view makes sense, I would suggest, in the context of a particular Enlightenment theory about property first propounded by John Locke. Locke argued that a person’s right to property comes from the mixing of labor with the common things of this world. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 811

Categorization

• XREF: Links directly to the reader’s existing interest in ‘Grafting & Growth’ — cultivation, appropriation, and the legitimizing work of labor on land. — connects to: Locke naturalized market creation as inevitable to defend his class’s property project — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 281; Neoliberalism abolishes classes, the individual, and Lockean property in one move — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 164; Colonial maps erased native settlement to designate empty Lockean land — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1405 (+2 more)