63-118 Postcolonial Geographies of Land (engl.)

Instructors: Emma Monama

Event type: Practical course/lab

Displayed in timetable as:

Hours per week: 2

Credits: 3,0

Language of instruction: English

Min. | Max. participants: 8 | 22

Comments/contents:
Land has been a subject of contestation since the “founding” of many countries and in some cases prior to these moments. Especially within settler colonies, tensions over land, access, wealth, mobility, naming and claiming ownership over many things including natural resources abound (Bryceson et al. 2000; Moyo and Yeros 2005; Finney, 2010: 247- 248). Apart from struggles over possession and access, land struggles were and continue to be about the production of racialized subjectivities. As Bhandar (2018: 4) argues, “The colonial encounter produced a racial regime of ownership that persists into the present, creating a conceptual apparatus in which justifications for private property ownership remain bound to a concept of the human that is thoroughly racial in its makeup”.

The course will focus on how colonialism and particularly settler colonialism has shaped contemporary understandings of land including its relationship to citizenship, development, governance and contemporary reform strategies. Drawing from postcolonial and decolonial approaches, the seminar will introduce students to questions of how to reimagine the coloniality of land geographies and to highlight the various ways people conceptualize land.