Ink and Land examines how struggles between indigenous landowners over a prospective mine are waged through documents that inscribe social orders lasting beyond the disputes themselves. Drawing on archival research and long-term ethnographic fieldwork, the book shows how factions vie for recognition as customary landowners by mobilising affidavits, court declarations, and incorporation certificates.
To analyse this dynamic, Ink and Land develops the concept of “antagonistic documentality”: a form of conflict in which parties pursue competing world-building projects through and about documents, reshaping relations between land, law, and society. The book thereby advances debates in anthropology, legal studies, and STS.
