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Dissertation Proposal Defense
Land Acquisition for Mining: A Case Study of Tanzania
Mariam M. Kurtz
COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Dr. Richard Rubenstein (Chair)
Dr. Lesley Dwyer
Dr. Mark Jacobs
Dr. Gwendolyn Mikell
Abstract
Land acquisition for mining in “Kalole” village in Tanzania is an example of land acquisition taking place in Africa and other parts of the world. In recent years, millions of hectares of African land have been sold or leased out to transnational or domestic entities while local people were evicted from their land. International corporations have acquired more land in resource-rich, financially poor countries like Tanzania, resulting in many conflicts from local to global levels. This primarily-ethnographic study uses both qualitative and quantitative approaches to investigate how the global process of land acquisition for mining in Kalole contradicts the indigenous people’s meanings of land, and affects their relationship to the land and to each other, in terms of their social fabric as well as economic, cultural and power dynamics. How has the process of land alienation affected their land rights as indigenous people such as their access to resources and traditional mechanisms of conflict resolution such as ancestral ceremonies? I will explore and compare pro-development, critical scholarship, and local paradigms about the meaning of land acquisition for mining, as well as assessing the accuracy of each perspective given what is actually happening in the field. A key feature of this ethnography is that I have what W.E.B. DuBois has called “double consciousness.” Growing up in Tanzania and having ancestral ties to the Sukuma people living in my research site, but having lived in the United States and obtained two degrees from American universities, I approach this study with both an understanding of contemporary social science research, on the one hand, and the culture of the indigenous people involved, on the other.