Land and Power in the Anthropocene: Perspectives from Africa

Catalog description

How and why is land use a contested issue? How can we understand land injustice in light of the Anthropocene, that is, human-induced climate change? How do African knowledges, practices, and experiences inform global debates about environmental, political, and socio-economic well-being? This course considers how racial and colonial thinking and processes compounded discourses about land and examines examples of resistance, legacies of struggle, and possible futures. Centering African perspectives in a global context, we will examine how individual, institutional, and societal conceptions of land are revealed in narratives, practices, and policies created and circulated by Africans as well as outsiders in the continent. We will also analyze how these dynamics have had and continue to have repercussions across the globe. We will engage with diverse written, oral, audio-visual, and digital sources and associated methodologies to explore perceptions of land and land ownership, and discuss various forms of land use including agriculture, pastoralism, conservation, mining, and urbanization, and potential futures.