Elusive Common

E. Rignall Karen

Description

An Elusive Common details the fraught dynamics of rural life in the arid periphery of southeastern Morocco. Karen Rignall considers whether agrarian livelihoods can survive in the context of globalized capitalism and proposes a new way of thinking about agrarian practice, politics, and land in North Africa and the Middle East. Her book questions many of the assumptions underlying movements for land and food sovereignty, theories of the commons, and environmental governance. Global market forces, government disinvestment, political marginalization, and climate change are putting unprecedented pressures on contemporary rural life. At the same time, rural peoples are defying their exclusion by forging new economic and political possibilities. In southern Morocco, the vibrancy of rural life was sustained by creative and often contested efforts to sustain communal governance, especially of land, as a basis for agrarian livelihoods and a changing wage labor economy. An Elusive Common follows these diverse strategies ethnographically to show how land became a site for conflicts over community, political authority, and social hierarchy. Rignall makes the provocative argument that land enclosures can be an essential part of communal governance and the fight for autonomy against intrusive state power and historical inequalities.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Marruecos
• Human geography
• Central
• Morocco

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 juillet 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501756146
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

AN ELUSIVE COMMON

A volume in the series Cornell Series on Land: New Perspectives on Territory, Development, and Environment

Edited by Wendy Wolford, Nancy Peluso, and Michael Goldman

A list of titles in this series is available at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

ANELUSIVE COMMON Land, Politics, and Agrarian Rurality in a Moroccan Oasis

KareN E. RigNall

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2021 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2021 by Cornell University Press

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Names: Rignall, Karen E., 1970– author. Title: An elusive common : land, politics, and agrarian rurality in a Moroccan oasis / Karen E. Rignall. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2021. | Series: Cornell series on land: new perspectives on territory, development, and environment | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020057795 (print) | LCCN 2020057796 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501756122 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501756139 (paperback) | ISBN 9781501756146 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501756153 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Land use, Rural—Political aspects—Morocco. | Land use, Rural—Social aspects—Morocco. | Land use, Rural—Economic aspects— Morocco. | Globalization—Political aspects—Morocco. | Globalization— Social aspects—Morocco. | Globalization—Economic aspects—Morocco. | Morocco—Rural conditions—21st century. Classification: LCC HN782.Z9 C665 2021 (print) | LCC HN782.Z9 (ebook) | DDC 307.3/30964—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057795 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057796

For my mother and father

Contents

Note on Transliteration and Translation

Introduction 1.  Custom and the Ambivalent Romance of Community 2.  Political Pluralism, Local Politics, and the State 3.  Land and the New Commoning 4.  Environmental Politics and the New Rurality 5.  Making a Living on and off the Land Conclusion

Acknowledgments Glossary Notes References Index

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Note on Transîteratîon and Transatîon

I transliterate placenames as they appear in official records in Morocco or are otherwise commonly written. I adopt the transliterations people use for their own names or, when I could not ascertain individual preferences, use the dominant spellings, which usually follow French conventions (oufor a longu, for exam ple). For other words in Tashelhit, the local Amazigh language, and Arabic, I use a simplified version of theInternational Journal of Middle East Studiestransliter ation system (namely, using diacritical marks only for the lettersʿayn and hamza and removing indications of long vowels and the doubled letter for theshadda). All translations are mine.

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