Development Seminar

Professor Li will discuss her new book Land's End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier

Land's End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier

Friday Jan 30, 10am-12pm, Anthropology Building AP 246, 19 Russell Street

Drawing on two decades of ethnographic research in Sulawesi, Indonesia, Land's End offers an intimate account of the emergence of capitalist relations among indigenous highlanders who privatized their common land to plant a global market crop, cacao. Some prospered; others lost their land. It is a story with potent messages for social movement activists, who expect indigenous people to be guardians of community and tradition, committed to sustaining food production. It also interrupts transition narratives that expect people who lose their land to march off to the city to find a job. For these newly landless highlanders, as for many other post-peasants across Asia, jobs are scarce. When land's end is a dead end, a different politics must emerge.

Join us for a presentation and discussion session with Tania Li, Derek Hall, and Christopher Krupa, and Katharine Rankin.

Lunch will be served, but please RSVP at http://anthropology.utoronto.ca/events/landsendbooklaunch/  so that we know how much food to order.

Co-sponsored with the UofT Asian Institute