Michael Goldman is Associate Professor of Sociology and Global Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Imperial Nature and editor of Privatizing Nature.Nancy Lee Peluso is the Henry J. Vaux Distinguished Professor of Forest Policy in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Rich Forests, Poor People and coeditor of Violent Environments.Wendy Wolford is Vice Provost for International Affairs and Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Professor of Global Development at Cornell University. She is the coeditor of Governing Global Land Deals and The New Enclosures.

• Introduction: The Social Lives of Land1. Colonization and the Recoding of Land in Classical Political Economy2. Shaping New Homelands: Colonial Politics of Land Relations and Management in the Cherokee Nation3. "I am Waorani": Between Indigenous and Settler Land Ontologies in the Ecuadorian Amazon4. What is Land? Ontology, Practice, and Indeterminacy5. The Autobiography of a Transylvanian Land Parcel:From Late Feudalism to Postsocialism6. From Sand to Land7. Wasteland and Paradise Garden: Building Soil in the Brazilian Cerrado8. Mobile Labor, Shifting Land Regimes, and Social Reproduction in East Java, Indonesia9. "Incompatible with a Progressive Agriculture": The Role of Manioc in Colonial and Postcolonial Visions for Landand Labor in Mozambique10. "Sitting on Old Mats to Plait New": The Gendered Struggle over Land and Livelihood in Liberia11. Producing Assets: The Social Strife of Land12. The Financialized and Dispossessed: Transforming Land and Lives into Speculative Assets13. People, Livelihoods, and Contested Meanings of Land in Tanzania14. Dances with Lairds: Lessons from Scottish Land Reform