Paper short abstract:

My paper explores links between land and persons created through familial social relationships over generations in Botswana. Exploring connections between tangible and intangible domains it examines temporality, linking present and past in ways that give rise to social inequality among the population.

Paper long abstract:

Based on an ethnographic study located in Botswana, I move beyond conceptions of the local as physically or territorially grounded to one that examines how it is constituted through links between persons and land derived from life histories extended over several generations. This not only takes account of a specific site in which social relations are bounded and locally constituted but also how perceptions of locality are discursively and historically constructed. Viewing land as both a tangible and intangible universe constructed through social relationships, I highlight ways in which individuals, as part of a 'local' community, find their life courses shaped by wider transnational and global processes, including law, that have an impact on their everyday lives. For some, this provides opportunities for upward mobility and future gains, while others find scope for action severely curtailed. In documenting these uneven, diverse effects of globalisation what emerges are processes of 'internalisation' and 'relocalisation' of global conditions allowing for the emergence of new identities, alliances and struggles for space and power within specific populations. Thus what exists in the here and now as a form of temporality is constantly remade, drawing on the past while fashioning new prospects for the future