The Biennial Trondheim Colloquium in Social Anthropology
12.04.2011
Land tenure and development in the North Ethiopian highlands:
Call for papers
The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Social Anthropology, will
arrange a colloquium focusing on land tenure in the plough-based smallholder farming societies of
northern Ethiopia. This is a topic covered by several anthropologists in the 1960s and by many, but
rather scattered, studies during recent decades. There is a particular need for well-focused local
studies, seeing local land tenure in the context both of the wider national pattern, and in relation to
local economic realities and cultural variation. The aim of the colloquium is to produce a
comprehensive study of land tenure and society in the northern highlands. The colloquium is
planned to be held in Trondheim, Norway, in late October 2011.
The colloquium will seek to cover a number of issues, such as
 The historical trajectory of land tenure
 Land tenure under the Därg
 EPRDF land reforms
 Land tenure and official development policy
 Local adaptations to official policy
 Farming systems and land tenure
 Rural-urban interaction
 Rural inequality
 Peasant innovators
 Local governance: state-peasant interaction
Other topics, or other ways of posing the questions, are highly welcome.
Registration of interest should be accompanied by an abstract of the planned contribution. It may
also be possible to submit a paper without actually participating.
The deadline for registration is 15 June 2011.
For queries and submission of papers, please contact:
Svein Ege and Harald Aspen
Department of Social Anthropology
NTNU Dragvoll, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
svein.ege@svt.ntnu.no