Property as Simulacrum: Informality and Illegality in the Postcolony

BE—150 Dean's Lecture: Ananya Roy - Property as Simulacrum: Informality and Illegality in the Postcolony

This talk is concerned with the making of property. Thinking across the global North and global South, Ananya highlights how rights to property are established and contested. Rather than take settlement and possession for granted, Ananya pays attention to the illegalities of the state through which property comes to be owned and used. Drawing on postcolonial thought, indigenous studies and black geographies, Ananya rethinks dispossession in relation to the long histories of racial capitalism. Such a vantage point makes possible new understandings of urban informality and urban inequality.

Watch here: