This course considers racial capitalism from an anthropological perspective through ethnographies and films which examine the role race, colonialism and white supremacy play in shaping and enabling contemporary forms of capitalist accumulation by dispossession in everyday life. Considering dispossession broadly, we will explore not only processes that dispossess people of property and land, but also of rights, modes of belonging, health, citizenship and life. We will also look at the ways people are organizing to reclaim what they have been dispossessed of or denied, from anti-eviction movements and abolitionist organizing to struggles for reproductive rights, food sovereignty and climate justice.
This course considers racial capitalism from an anthropological perspective through ethnographies and films which examine the role race, colonialism and white supremacy play in shaping and enabling contemporary forms of capitalist accumulation by dispossession in everyday life. Considering dispossession broadly, we will explore not only processes that dispossess people of property and land, but also of rights, modes of belonging, health, citizenship and life. We will also look at the ways people are organizing to reclaim what they have been dispossessed of or denied, from anti-eviction movements and abolitionist organizing to struggles for reproductive rights, food sovereignty and climate justice.
