Countering dispossession, reclaiming land: a social movement ethnography

Abstract

"Countering Dispossession, Reclaiming Land tells the story of a remarkable movement of Indonesian workers who, starting in the early 1990s, occupied the agribusiness plantation where they worked and reclaimed collective control of the land. In the years since, movement members have cultivated diverse agricultural forests, undoing the damage done over nearly a century of agribusiness abuse. Author David E. Gilbert illustrates how these workers-turned-activists moved beyond industrial agriculture's exploitation of laborers and the environment to create a more emancipatory and ecologically attuned way of living with the land. At a time when capitalism has remade landscapes and reordered society, the Casiavera reclaiming movement serves as an inspiring example of what global struggles for social and environmental justice can achieve"--