Rethinking Land: Anthropological Perspectives on Power, Property, and Environment

Catalog description

Land is often treated as stable ground, bounded property, or neutral territory. This course challenges these assumptions by examining interdisciplinary conceptions of land within anthropological scholarship. Its goal is to understand and situate the intersecting contestations over land as a global resource, shared environment, property, territorial foundation of the nation-state, and a site of human and non-human dwelling. Through historical and ethnographic case studies from different regions of the world, the course explores how land becomes central to colonial projects and decolonial struggles; how property and ownership are tied to citizenship and rights; how land is governed in contemporary settler-colonial and post-colonial contexts; and how climate change and environmental planning unevenly shape vulnerability and belonging. Together, these perspectives invite students to rethink land as a dynamic and unstable social relation rather than a fixed or neutral ground.