Short Abstract

When interventions end, their material remains may enter a twilight zone of ownership. This panel asks who can use, keep, sell or repurpose these remains, how such claims are justified, and why the same acts may be seen as resourcefulness, entitlement or theft.

Long Abstract

Across Africa, colonial infrastructures, state schemes, faith-based initiatives, development programmes and private enterprises have left material traces whose future use is often ambiguous and contested. When an intervention ends, its remains may become resources for making a living, fulfilling obligations or claiming recognition. A disused building can house a congregation; equipment can help establish a business; an object kept by a former worker can attest to a life’s work. Yet taking, keeping or repurposing what has been left behind may be praised as resourcefulness, defended as a deserved share, or condemned as theft. This panel asks who can claim such remains—from small objects kept as mementos to vehicles and buildings—how they acquire value, and how material claims become moral claims. Remains may enter a twilight zone of ownership, where it is unclear who may take or use them. Claims may draw on personal labour and investment, past promises or current needs, or responsibilities to preserve a place for future generations. Such disputes concern what interventions owe people, what people owe one another, and who may legitimately make which claims.

We invite contributions that follow remains through reuse, sale, or abandonment, attending to the values people attach to them and the unequal power to make particular claims count. Who can turn such remains into a livelihood, an inheritance or a source of status? Whose claims are recognised as legitimate, and whose are dismissed? By tracing these judgments, the panel explores how material afterlives shape possibilities for accumulation and self-accomplishment.

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