Larri Webinar: Articulating Alienation. The History and Experience of Subsumption in Rural Kigoma, Tanzania

Karolina’s thesis explores the intensification of capitalism in Kigoma Region, Northwest Tanzania, and how people experience this. This intensification is connected to land in different ways, and the thesis shows how local conditions of production are influenced by wider processes of change such as land privatisation, large-scale investments in land, increased commodification of small-scale farming, and extensive nature conservation. These changes have historical roots, culminating in a present characterised by loss of land, and in peoples’ loss of the ability to keep on farming. Relying on Marx’s theory of alienation the thesis suggests that one way to better understand what capitalist extension means in rural Tanzania is to focus on how people experience it. This experience, the thesis shows, is ultimately one of increased estrangement between people. This offers new perspectives on the severity of capitalist development and connected forms of exploitation. Importantly, it sheds new light on present-day struggles over land.

Speaker: Karolina Wallin Fernqvist, SLU Discussant: Prof. Mats Widgren, SU Discussion facilitated by: Per Knutsson, GU