‘Freedom Without Exclusions: Land, Labour, and Liberty for All’

Featuring: Sam Okyere (University of Bristol); Raphael Godlove Ahenu Jr (Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Global Media Foundation – GLOMEF); Alf Nilsen (University of Pretoria); Nandita Sharma (University of Hawai’i at Manoa).

Discussant: Victoria Hattam (The New School for Social Research and Leverhulme Visiting Professor, hosted by MMB).

US- and British-based antislavery campaigners have paid much attention to ‘modern slavery’ in Ghana over the past decade, especially ‘child slavery’ in the fishing industry and artisanal mining, and promoted interventions to ‘rescue’ child workers. Yet for many members of the communities affected, the problem is not that they are enslaved, but rather that they have been dispossessed of subsistence land as a result of recent land grabs by multinational corporations and other companies.

At this event, Sam Okyere and Raphael Godlove Ahenu Jr will speak about contestations over land, labour and liberty in Ghana, and the ways in which different ideas about slavery, freedom, and political community are mobilised, both in different sorts of claims to social, economic, and political resources, and in efforts to legitimate or delegitimate them.

Contributions from Nandita Sharma and Alf Nilsen alert us to the exclusionary logic that underpins the idea of autochthonous links to territory and how this can also be reflected in certain claims to indigeneity. This raises important questions about what it would mean to imagine freedom otherwise – without territory, labour exploitation, and the exclusion, even unfreedom, of those made as “outsiders.” That is, how we might locate both a material and ethical grounding for genuine emancipation for every being on our one and only planet.

This event is hybrid and will be held online and in person. Please register here to receive the Zoom link and other information.

This event is jointly organised by the ERC-funded project, Modern Marronage, the Pursuit and Practice of Freedom in the Contemporary World, the British Sociological Association Study Group, Slavery and Modern Slavery, and MMB.