Land As Property / Land Beyond Property
Exploring the complexities of land ownership, dispossession, and resistance in racial capitalism, this panel delves into the fluidity and contestations of property in diverse landscapes and analytical frameworks. From communal commons in Sudan to Jamaican ‘capture land’ practices and the dynamics of the ‘global housing crisis,’ the panelists unveil the intricate relationships between land, power, and belonging and challenge conventional notions of ownership while highlighting enduring struggles for land justice and autonomy.
“The khalla is running away from us:” Gulf Capital, Deficient Deserts and Property-making in central Sudan Nisrin Elamin, University of Toronto
Capture Land as Abolition Geography: The Mutuality of Placemaking and Flight Rachel Goffe, University of Toronto
The Land of Capital: Transformations of Ownership Across Housing and Farmland in the Longue-duree FTC Manning, CPCP
Register for the in person event here.
About the speakers:
Nisrin Elamin is currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Toronto. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Stanford University in 2020. She is currently writing a book tentatively titled: Stratified Enclosures: Land, Capital and Empire-making in central Sudan which focuses on Saudi and Emirati land grabs and community resistance to land dispossession in the Gezira region of Sudan. In addition to scholarly articles, Nisrin has also published several op-eds for Al Jazeera, the Washington Post, Okay Africa and the Egypt Independent. Before pursuing her Ph.D., Nisrin spent over a decade working as an educator, community organizer and researcher in the US and Tanzania.
Rachel Goffe is a geographer and architect. Concerned with place-making and livelihood, her work looks at postcolonial state formation by investigating the mobility of the boundary around “formal” relationships to land, and space more broadly. While Rachel’s work is sited in Jamaica, it aims to intervene in theories regarding Black epistemologies and abolition geographies, incomplete enclosure and racial capitalism. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Geography (Scarborough) and the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto.
FTC Manning is a visiting scholar at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, CUNY. Manning is a geographer by way of philosophy and political economy, working on ground rent, theories of the state, and the political economy of land dispossession / the land dispossession at the heart of political economy. They are the Treasurer of the board of the San Francisco Community Land Trust and a participant in local organizing groups fighting for homes, resources, and mutual aid with housed and houseless neighbors and sex workers. Other research foci include ontologies of law, colonial land transfer, racialization in the longue-durée, psychoanalysis, quantum epistemology, and trauma-informed pedagogy. You can find their work at https://opencuny.org/ftcmanning/.
This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, at the CUNY Graduate Center, the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU, and the People’s Forum. It is free and open to the public.
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