Afterword

Abstract The articles in the special section “Materializing Land” return to the vexed question of land at a time when the global consolidation of land into a few hands is rising staggeringly, accompanied by the hydra-headed process of land financialization and assetization across the globe. Taking its lessons from the contemporary moment, the special section plumbs land's deep historiography in order to read land against the multiple containers through which it is overwhelmingly discussed: property, territory, sovereignty, commodity, and the agrarian question. Simultaneously, taking cues from the contemporary ecosocial crisis, the articles situate their analysis of the land question in various geological and biospheric configurations in order to reanimate existing debates about processes of commodification, disembbedding, and movements in resistance to these forces, and the how the contemporary unfolding of settler colonialism increasingly proceeds by securing underground territory. Thus the pieces reanimate the land question as refracted through the lens of finance, capital, and ecological transformation.