David E. Gilbert's "Countering Dispossession, Reclaiming Land: A Social Movement Ethnography" Book Launch

 

Two decades ago, a group of Indonesian agricultural workers began occupying the agribusiness plantation near their homes. In the years since, members of this remarkable movement have reclaimed collective control of their land and cultivated diverse agricultural forests on it, repairing the damage done over nearly a century of abuse. Countering Dispossession, Reclaiming Land is their story. David E. Gilbert offers an account of the ways these workers-turned-activists mobilized to move beyond industrial agriculture's exploitation of workers and the environment, illustrating how emancipatory and ecologically attuned ways of living with land are possible. At a time when capitalism has remade landscapes and reordered society, the Casiavera reclaiming movement stands as an inspiring example of what struggles for social and environmental justice can achieve.

 

 

David Gilbert is an environmental anthropologist with a special interest in social movements, ecological change, and post-development theory. He is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He held previous positions as a Ciriacy Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Berkeley and lecturer at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Stanford University.