A discussion of Admire Mseba's new book, Society, Power, and Land in Northeastern Zimbabwe, ca. 1560–1960 (Ohio University Press, 2024). The author will be joined in conversation by Mariana Candido (Emory University) and David Hughes (Rutgers University), moderated by Lindsay O’Neill (USC). Organized in partnership with the Van Hunnick History Department and the Department of Anthropology. Registration is required. REGISTER HERE

 

About the Book: A little over two decades ago, Zimbabwe undertook its Fast Track Land Reform Programme. Critics saw it as nothing more than an assault on human and property rights for political expedience by a ruling elite that was fast losing its power. In contrast, those sympathetic to the land reform program saw it as fundamental to the righting of colonialism’s historical wrongs. Yet, rural displacements at the hands of state actors, or of those closely connected to them, continue. As in the past, the continuing land conflicts are mostly understood as the result of the actions of an authoritarian state that exploits its control of land for the political and economic benefit of those who inhabit it. These explanations share one thing in common: each understands the country’s perpetual land questions in terms of the actions or inactions of the colonial or the postcolonial state.

This book refocuses attention on how regimes of power rooted in kinship, gender, generation, and status have, individually and in combination, informed access to land in precolonial northeastern Zimbabwe. It then examines how these regimes of power interacted with colonial policies to inform the African experience in colonial Zimbabwe. Further, the book places land and the ability to ensure its fecundity at the center of the making and moderation of precolonial political power and how this power was impacted by the imposition of colonial rule. MORE

 

About the Author: Admire Mseba is an assistant professor in the Van Hunnick History Department at the University of Southern California. His research has appeared in the African Studies Review, the Journal of Southern African Studies, the International Journal of African Historical Studies, African Economic History, and several edited collections. He teaches courses in the deep and recent African past as well as in African environmental and economic history.

 

Open to attendants outside of USC. An excerpt of the book will be made available to registered attendants. Registration before the event is required. This event is part of the Levan Institute for the Humanities' “Book Chats” series, conversations about new books published by USC scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. To see more events in this series, including recordings of past events, visit https://dornsife.usc.edu/levan-institute/book-chats/.

 

Questions? Contact the Levan Institute at usclevan@usc.edu

 

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