Dispossession

Dispossession refers to the process by which people or communities are deprived of land, property, resources, rights, or means of livelihood, whether through force, law, economic pressure, or fraud. Karl Marx described primitive accumulation as the historical separation of producers from the means of production, as in the English enclosures, which created a propertyless working class. Rosa Luxemburg argued that capitalism depends on the continued appropriation of noncapitalist spheres, and David Harvey developed the concept of accumulation by dispossession to describe contemporary privatization, financialization, land grabs, and the commodification of public goods. Karl Polanyi analyzed the destruction of customary protections by market expansion, while Patrick Wolfe argued that settler colonialism is a structure rather than an event, premised on the elimination of indigenous peoples and the seizure of territory. Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou explored dispossession as a condition of precarity and loss of belonging, and Saskia Sassen examined expulsions from land and livelihoods. Glen Coulthard linked dispossession to indigenous resistance and recognition. Examples include colonial land seizure, eviction, foreclosure, and displacement by mining or dams. Dispossession remains central to research on capitalism, colonialism, inequality, land rights, and social movements.