What is the use of the ownProps arg in mapStateToProps and mapDispatchToProps?

If the ownProps parameter is specified, react-redux will pass the props that were passed to the component into your connect functions. So, if you use a connected component like this:

import ConnectedComponent from './containers/ConnectedComponent'

<ConnectedComponent
  value="example"
/>

The ownProps inside your mapStateToProps and mapDispatchToProps functions will be an object:

{ value: 'example' }

And you could use this object to decide what to return from those functions.

For example, on a blog post component:

// BlogPost.js
export default function BlogPost (props) {
  return <div>
    <h2>{props.title}</h2>
    <p>{props.content}</p>
    <button onClick={props.editBlogPost}>Edit</button>
  </div>
}

You could return Redux action creators that do something to that specific post:

// BlogPostContainer.js
import { bindActionCreators } from 'redux'
import { connect } from 'react-redux'
import BlogPost from './BlogPost.js'
import * as actions from './actions.js'

const mapStateToProps = (state, props) =>
  // Get blog post data from the store for this blog post ID.
  getBlogPostData(state, props.id)

const mapDispatchToProps = (dispatch, props) => bindActionCreators({
  // Pass the blog post ID to the action creator automatically, so
  // the wrapped blog post component can simply call `props.editBlogPost()`:
  editBlogPost: () => actions.editBlogPost(props.id)
}, dispatch)

const BlogPostContainer = connect(mapStateToProps, mapDispatchToProps)(BlogPost)
export default BlogPostContainer

Now you would use this component like so:

import BlogPostContainer from './BlogPostContainer.js'

<BlogPostContainer id={1} />