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This interview with Arnaud Orain highlights that, although property and its foundations occupy a central place in social organization, it was only late in the history of mainstream economic thought that it came to be framed within a genuine theoretical framework. In the eighteenth century, two conceptions stood in opposition: one grounded in the idea of absolute natural right (the Physiocrats), and another based on shared customary rights. The nineteenth century sanctified absolute private property without, however, analyzing it as a true economic object. It was only in the twentieth century, with the economic theory of property rights (the Chicago school) and later the Bloomington school (notably represented by Elinor Ostrom), that property became a workable theoretical framework, particularly in relation to ecological challenges and debt crises.