Scott Matter
| Scott Matter is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and received my PhD in socio-cultural anthropology from McGill University in 2011. I have been conducting research on land tenure transformation, rural resource governance, and the cultural politics of belonging in Kenya since 2003. Email: scott.matter@rutgers.edu |
Research on Land-grabbing:
Fair dealing or compromise under duress? Conceding land for carbon forestry in exchange for tenure security in Kenya's Mau Forest
This project addresses the politics and ethics of appropriating contested land via ostensibly free and fair transactions, whether such land swaps are (or should be considered) “land grabs” – representing a form of accumulation by attenuated dispossession – and what implications such processes have for the future of forest conservation in the interests of climate change mitigation, for local development and security, and for local autonomy and national sovereignty. I use as a case study a REDD+ pilot project established in a degraded forest area where access and control have been disputed over the past twenty years, including through violent conflict involving the state and members of different ethnic communities. Central questions include: Who will benefit from this land deal, how, and when? Have long-term, ancestral claims to the “forest” been extinguished or deferred? How are the terms of this deal understood by various stakeholders? How are different understandings reconciled, if at all? And, to what extent does negotiating transfer of control over contested land constitute free, prior, and informed consent?
