Legal Technologies of Primitive Accumulation: Judicial Robbery and Dispossession‐by‐Restitution in Warsaw

© 2019 Urban Research Publications Limited Among the ‘extra-economic means’ that facilitate primitive accumulation, or accumulation by dispossession, the law plays a prominent role. But works on neoliberal urban restructuring rarely engage with concrete legal technologies. Analysing judicial property restitution (‘reprivatization’) in Warsaw, this article grasps the machine of accumulation by dispossession at a moment of faltering and exposes the distinctive legal technologies behind its troubleshooting. It makes three contributions to critical urban studies. First, it demonstrates how judicial systems can steal political conflicts that obstruct the cycle of accumulation by dispossession. It thus introduces the notion of ‘judicial robbery’, a non-legislated expropriation of common property through judicial engineering that simultaneously deprives the public of political agency. Second, it shows that seemingly neutral legal technicalities, usually sheltered from political debate, can become a key locus of urban politics. Third, it examines the agency, scope and spatial patterns of ‘dispossession by restitution’, the term I use for a locally specific form of accumulation by dispossession in Warsaw. Lastly, I raise the question of political struggle against primitive accumulation. Is the judicial robbery reversible? If we can reclaim property, can we also reclaim political conflicts that have been stolen by the law?

A biopolymer composite that catalyzes the reduction of oxygen to water

A biopolymer composite consisting of polypyrrole, ABTS, and laccase (PAL) was electrodeposited onto the surface of an electrode and was shown to catalyze the reduction of dioxygen to water under acidic conditions. The catalytic activity of this biopolymer composite is highest at pH 4, decreasing with increasing pH. The activity of laccase immobilized within this polymer composite was found to be higher than laccase dissolved in solution when methanol was present or at elevated temperatures.open283