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- Convenors:
-
Mechthild von Vacano
(Universität Freiburg)
Verena La Mela (University of Heidelberg)
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- Format:
- Workshop
- Working groups:
- Economic Anthropology
Short Abstract:
Property and access to it are central to the organization of inequality and hierarchy in societies. This panel explores the contested dynamics of property transfers from above and below through concepts such as expropriation, dispossession, collectivization, and commoning.
Long Abstract:
Property and access to it play a pivotal role in shaping inequality and hierarchy in societies. This panel focuses on transfers of or struggles over property and related attempts at commoning or uncommoning. We are interested in the entangled dynamics of expropriation and dispossession from above and moves toward collectivization and commoning from below in contemporary conflicts over property. "New enclosures" (Federici 2018) drive the dispossession of private or common property for infrastructure expansion, resource extraction and border processes. These forms of uncommoning face new kinds of collectivization movements. Examples include the ballot initiative "Deutsche Wohnen Enteignen" struggling to common housing, or movements around the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, which resist the forced expropriation of land for a pipeline project.
This panel engages with the politics of property transfers to understand the utopias and dystopias of un/commoning. By juxtaposing the different directions, we seek to understand how property transfers from above and from below are enabled, valued, and known. When and where do property relations and transfers become contested? How are they legitimized, how are they imagined differently?
We seek to foster a conversation between anthropologists, activists, or hybrid forms of epistemic practice. We invite people who are involved in and study social movements of commoning, socialization, and collectivization, as well as those who study expropriation and dispossession. And we especially welcome papers that bring these projects of bottom-up and top-down transfer into conversation.
Accepted contributions:
Contribution short abstract:
This article explores the limits of commodification on Nairobi’s urbanising peripheries where land-selling companies harness techniques of equivalence-making to turn land near-‘portable’ (Kockelman 2016), 'enclosing' its colonial histories, 'disclosing' it as an icon of middle-class aspiration.
Contribution long abstract:
On Nairobi’s urbanising peripheries, land-selling companies have sprung up to mediate the transfer of land, accumulating vast tranches from unseen elite figures, and re-selling them in parcels to would-be middle-class buyers. In their sales pitches, these companies present ‘land’ as an indistinguishable commodity, disembedded from historical context and setting, capable of catering to the universality of middle-class aspirations. Against this backdrop, this article is about the art of making land seem ‘portable’ – about the extents and limits to which land can be converted into an exchange-value on a ‘real-estate frontier’ (Gillespie 2020). As Tania Li (2014) notes, ‘land stays in place. It cannot be removed.’ Yet by drawing upon the work of Paul Kockelman (2016), I aim to show how land-selling companies do their utmost to uproot land in concept, through equivalence-making techniques that turn ‘land’ into an abstract and generalisable icon. Based on fieldwork amongst land-selling companies, surveyors, prospective buyers, lawyers, and legal clerks, this paper draws attention to the processes through which Kenya's land has been made market-ready. It shows how the ‘grabbed’ colonial origins of land advertised by land-selling companies are ‘enclosed’ and obfuscated through techniques of demarcation, land transfer, and marketing. In turn, plots of land are ‘disclosed’ once more as purified icons of a universal middle-class dream, suitable for house-building or speculation, situated in the non-place of the market.
Contribution short abstract:
The influx of capital into Goa has fuelled conflicts over land use, access and rights. Examining contested real estate projects and the decline of coastal commons, this paper analyses the potential of commoning practices in shifting regimes of dispossession and market expansion.
Contribution long abstract:
The recent influx of capital into Goa, a state in West India, as a sprawling site for “second-homes”, digital nomads and slow travel tourism, has brought the state’s history of land rights and access to the fore. Increasingly, illegal constructions and pseudo-legal reclassifications of land categories have facilitated rapid infrastructure development, prompting citizen-led resistance through demonstrations and movements like Amche Mollem and Goa Bachao Abhiyan (Save Goa movement). This paper examines two key moments of contestation to explore evolving imaginaries of the commons in Goa.
The first centres instances of land filling and hill cutting for real estate development which are vehemently opposed by local NGOs, activists and citizen-led efforts across villages. The second investigates Goa’s khazan lands—low-lying marshy fields reclaimed from the sea and historically managed as commons—where traditional systems of cultivation and collective landholding face threats from private acquisition and neglect. By analysing these heritage systems and the resistance to their erosion, the paper highlights the tension between social practices of managing coastal commons and the economic valuation of these ecosystems.
Drawing on Harvey’s (2009) critique of the binary between private property and state intervention, I argue that these tensions open up new ways of conceptualising collectivisation within market regimes. Goa’s vibrant history of environmental activism and advocacy for equitable land and resource use continues to inform the possibilities for coastal transformation. This paper contributes to a broader understanding of the politics of property transfers and the potential for commoning practices to challenge forces of dispossession.
Contribution short abstract:
As less people farm the common grazing area, crofters are exchanging common grazing rights for enclosed land. Which politics underlie this property (use) transfer from commons to private use, and what could this indicate for other commoning projects?
Contribution long abstract:
In recent years, the common grazing areas of Shetland (UK) have been emptying of sheep. While previously they were grazed densely, now only a few crofters (small scale farmers) use their rights to graze animals on the commons, as most prefer keeping their animals in enclosed fields. In Scotland, use rights in the common grazing can be exchanged for an ‘apportionment’: A fenced off part of the commons that is used for only one’s own sheep. Most crofters trade in parts of their shares for the right of fence off the common land and privately use and improve it.
This property transfer from communal to private management, calls for closer attention to why Shetland crofters are trading access to common land for control over enclosed land. Is this a case of uncommoning from below? Or is further enclosure of the commons merely a strategy to cope with progressively abandoned commons?
Instead of displaying a forced expropriation of land, this is a case where the economic and social realities (e.g. of financing the croft through supplementary part-time or full-time work) leads many crofters to view enclosing the commons through apportionment as the only viable response. This case highlights the tensions that arise when working with commons in an economic system that benefits private property and leads to the questions: why is choosing to manage a commons increasingly challenging in this community? And how does partial enclosure affect the commons?