The uses of land. Cosmopolitics of territoriality

The lecture was the first part of a cycle devoted to a critical reconceptualization of certain notions by means of which anthropology has described and analyzed the modalities and institutions of living together in non-modern collectives. The aim is to bring about a theoretical aggiornamento in the study of areas of social life usually segmented under specialized headings - socio-political organization, the economy, religion - in order to take better account of the diversity of ontological regimes under which humans and non-humans are assembled. The first phase of this program, the one that occupied the course of the year, consisted in taking up one of the most elementary foundations of living together, the relationship with the land, and more precisely the concrete modalities of occupation and development of the very diverse environments inhabited by humans. Limiting the survey to non-modern collectives was certainly motivated by reasons of competence, but also by a desire to draw on the intellectual resources and life experiences offered by these collectives to escape the historical contingency of anthropological concepts and, perhaps, to reformulate these concepts so that they could also be applied to Moderns.