KITLV / VVI seminar | Land grabbing in time and space: Global perspectives

Join us for a seminar on land grabbing in time and space. This seminar seeks to foster a rigorous, interdisciplinary exploration of the phenomena of land grabbing, engaging with its historical antecedents, contemporary manifestations, and the varied responses it has elicited globally.

This panel discussion is sparked by the critical insights from Professor Tony Platt’s seminal works, The Scandal of Cal: Land Grabs, White Supremacy, and Miseducation at UC Berkeley (2023, Heyday) and Grave Matters: The Controversy Over Excavating California’s Buried Indigenous Past (2021, Heyday). These texts provide a compelling critique of how historical land dispossession intertwines with systemic racial injustices and the ongoing contestation over cultural spaces, particularly within the Californian context.

Our panel aims to convene scholars, activists, and practitioners from both the Global North and Global South to engage in a deep and nuanced discussion on land grabbing. Topics will include the legal, socio-economic, religious and political dimensions of land rights and land use, the historical and contemporary processes driving land dispossession, and the diverse forms of resistance and advocacy emerging in response to these challenges.

Participants will delve into the implications of land grabbing and land on marginalized communities, explore the intersectionality of land rights with issues of race, identity, and sovereignty, and discuss the role of social justice movements in combating these inequities. This panel aspires to contribute to the academic discourse on land rights by integrating perspectives across disciplines and geographies, thereby advancing a holistic understanding of land grabbing and its global ramifications.

We encourage scholars, students, and advocates to join us in this critical dialogue, aiming to advance scholarly knowledge and inform effective strategies for securing equitable land rights and fostering social justice worldwide.
 
Paper 1: States and Corporate Land Acquisition: Comparing Regimes of Dispossession across the Global South
Dr. Ward Berenschot (KITLV) & Dr. Bernardo Ribeiro de Almeida (LUC & VVI)

By bringing together studies of land dispossession from a range of different countries from South America and Africa to the Middle East and Asia, the aim of this paper is to engage in a comparative discussion of the relationship between states and private capital in the acquisition of rural land. To spark this discussion, the paper synthesizes these studies to develop a comparative understanding of how ‘regimes of dispossession’ and dispossessory processes vary between countries and sectors.

Paper 2: Visibility in life, anonymity in death: Sub-Saharan Africans dealing with death and burial in Morocco
Dr. Nadia Sonneveld (VVI)

Land grabbing can take many forms, both visible and invisible. In its most manifest forms, it involves land dispossession for the construction of houses, highways, and cemeteries. Invisible forms occur when certain deaths go unrecorded in national and cemetery registers. This presentation explores this latter, hidden form of what might be called land grabbing.

Based on empirical fieldwork and legal analysis, it focuses on sub-Saharan Africans in Morocco, with regular and irregular immigration statuses, who have lived in the country for varying periods of time. Given the cultural importance of a “good death” in many sub-Saharan African societies, often defined by burial near one’s ancestors, this study examines how they navigate formal and informal norms surrounding death and burial in this predominantly Muslim country where life events are governed by religion-based laws, i.e. Muslim (and Jewish) law.

I argue that, despite the enduring presence of sub-Saharan Africans in Morocco and the attention paid to their presence in public and political spheres, both within the EU and in Morocco, they often become invisible in death, as their graves go unregistered and unmarked. However, over time, some sub-Saharan Africans have come to recognise the importance of planning for their interment in Moroccan soil, including proper registration and headstone placement, to leave tangible traces of their presence in Morocco for future generations to trace their ancestral roots.

Paper 3: Land grabbing, local chiefs, and international actors in the east of the DRC
Dr. Carolien Jacobs (VVI)

There is limited formal registration and administration of land in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Individuals can obtain secure access to land through specific customary arrangements, which involve paying tribute to the local chiefs, but overlapping claims to land are not uncommon. The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it explores how local chiefs actively contribute to the creation of legal uncertainty by selling of land to multiple occupants, and how this results in land grabs by powerful local elites at the expense of the most vulnerable. Secondly, this paper takes a critical decolonial perspective to discuss the role which international actors can and cannot play in addressing the inequality these customary arrangements lead to.

Note: this paper is based on ongoing qualitative research as part of the Just Future Consortium, led by Cordaid. One of the aims of the programme is to improve access to justice in the DRC.

Paper 4: Dispossession of Land in the Dutch Empire
Prof. Pepijn Brandon & team

While Dutch expansion in the seventeenth and eighteenth century is often discussed as a primarily commercial affair, it centrally included violently taking possession of land and the enforced change of land-use on a global scale. Historiography so far has paid relatively little attention to the methods, justifications, institutions and practices for the appropriation, redistribution and strategic re-purposing of land in the early-modern Dutch Empire. This presentation will draw on the first findings of a larger collective project that compares ideas and strategies for land dispossession in the Banda Islands, Java and Formosa under the Dutch East India Company (VOC), in Suriname, and in the peripheral provinces of the Dutch Republic itself during the Eighty Years’ War. It will outline some of the opportunities and challenges created by conceptualizing these examples of dispossession as forms of “land grabbing”, with particular attention to the way in which thinking about possession and dispossession of land necessitates thinking about social relations and structures of domination beyond the land itself.
 
Tentative Program
9:15 AM – 9:20 AM: Welcome and Introduction – Prof. Rosemarijn Hoefte

9:20 AM – 9:40 AM: Opening Talk – Prof. Tony Platt

An opening talk to set the stage, drawing on insights from Platt’s works to highlight the historical and contemporary issues of land grabbing and spark the dialogue for the panel.

9:40 AM – 10:30 AM: Session 1 – Papers 1 & 2 (Each presentation: 15 minutes and 20 minutes of reflection on these papers)

10:30 AM – 10:50 AM: Coffee Break

10:50 AM – 11:40 AM: Session 2 – Papers 3 &4 (Each presentation: 15 minutes and 20 minutes of reflection on these papers)

11:40 AM – 12:30 PM: Plenary Discussion – led by Prof. Pepijn Brandon

12:30 PM – 13.00 PM: Light Lunch & Socializing

Interested in attending this seminar?
Please sent an email before 1 September 2024 to: [email protected].

Image
‘Boemi kolonisatie’. Source: KITLV 1401184