land, rights, and the practice of making a living in pre-saharan morocco

278 Pages·2016·3.61 MB·English

University of Kentucky
UKnowledge
Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology Anthropology
2012
LAND, RIGHTS, AND THE PRACTICE OF MAKING A LIVING IN
PRE-SAHARAN MOROCCO
Karen Eugenie Rignall
University of Kentucky,
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The document mentioned above has been reviewed and accepted by the student’s advisor, on
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Karen Eugenie Rignall, Student
Dr. Lisa Cliggett, Major Professor
Dr. Richard Jeffries, Director of Graduate Studies
LAND, RIGHTS, AND THE PRACTICE OF
MAKING A LIVING IN PRE-SAHARAN MOROCCO

______________________________________

DISSERTATION
______________________________________

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the
College of Arts and Sciences
at the University of Kentucky

By
Karen Eugenie Rignall

Lexington, Kentucky

Director: Dr. Lisa Cliggett, Associate Professor of Anthropology

Lexington, Kentucky

2012

Copyright © Karen Eugenie Rignall 2012
ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION

LAND, RIGHTS, AND THE PRACTICE OF
MAKING A LIVING IN PRE-SAHARAN MOROCCO

This dissertation explores the relationship between land tenure and livelihoods in pre-
Saharan Morocco as an ethical struggle over subsistence rights and the definition of community.
Research in an oasis valley of southern Morocco indicated how changing land use practices
framed contestations over community, political authority, and social hierarchies. The dissertation
specifically examines the extension of settlement and cultivation from the oasis into the arid
steppe. The research methodology contextualizes household decision-making around land use and
livelihood strategies within the framework of land tenure regimes and other regional, national,
and global processes. Households with the resources and prestige to navigate customary tenure
regimes in their favor used these institutions to facilitate land acquisition and investments in
commercial agricultural production. Rather than push for capitalist land markets, they invoked a
discourse of communalism in support of customary regimes. In contrast, marginalized families
without access to land mobilized to divide collective lands and secure individual freehold tenure.
This complicates a prominent critique in agrarian studies that privatization signals the immersion
of peripheral lands into neoliberal tenure regimes. The research shows that in southern Morocco,
resistance to communal tenure regimes favoring elites was rooted in a discourse of subsistence
rights and ethical claims to membership in a just community rather than a simple acquiescence to
the power of neoliberal property relations. The dissertation therefore explores the shifting fault
lines of social differentiation and the political and cultural embeddedness of land in processes of
"repeasantization," the resurgence of rural peasantries in the context of the growing
industrialization of global food production. The research draws on cultural anthropology,
geography, and political economy to explore an understudied issue in the anthropology of the
Middle East and North Africa: the economic and environmental dimensions of agrarian
livelihoods and rural social dynamics from a critical theoretical perspective.

KEYWORDS: Land Tenure, Middle East and North Africa, Agrarian Change, Rural
Livelihoods, Political Ecology
Karen Eugenie Rignall
Student's Signature

June 7, 2012
Date
LAND, RIGHTS, AND THE PRACTICE OF
MAKING A LIVING IN PRE-SAHARAN MOROCCO

By
Karen Eugenie Rignall

Lisa Cliggett, PhD
Director of Dissertation

Richard Jeffries, PhD
Director of Graduate Studies

June 7, 2012
Date
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My first thanks go to the friends and research participants in the Mgoun valley and
elsewhere in Morocco who made this dissertation possible. I was touched by the generosity with
which they shared their stories and by the myriad ways, both large and small, that people in
Mgoun welcomed my family into the life of their communities.
Rachida and Malika Ouchaou supported our family and enriched my research through
their creative insights and extensive networks. Moulay Ahmed El Amrani was the key to my
fieldwork experience, facilitating both my professional and personal relationships. Mastafa Zahir
and Elphège Ghestem welcomed us in Rabat and were instrumental in the choice of Mgoun for
the research. Lahcen Azghari, Said Samlali, and El Houcine Attar were my closest collaborators
in the research. The Ait el Hashimis were my second family, and there are many more people
throughout the valley who I cannot name but who were deeply generous and welcoming. I can
only hope that the profound personal experience my fieldwork represented finds some expression
in the written product.
The fieldwork was made possible by the National Science Foundation (project award no.
0920370) and the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (project award no.
8064). I am grateful for graduate support funding from the University of Kentucky as well the
University of Kentucky Multi-Year Fellowship that made my graduate work possible. The
Department of Anthropology was a wonderful place to do a PhD and I am grateful for the
intellectual environment and institutional support. I want to thank MaryBeth Chrostowsky,
Allison Harnish, Maria Moreno, and Monica Stephens for their camaraderie in our writing group.
Thanks also to my cohort, Alissa Lamb, Lizz New, and Sheila Dorsey Vinton and the many other
graduate students who created such a collegial environment in the department. Ilana Feldman,
Mani Limbert, and Jessica Winegar offered warm encouragement along the way and models of
anthropological scholarship to which I aspire.
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Jim Miller and Saadia Maski of the Moroccan-American Commission for Educational
and Cultural Exchange assisted with the research clearance process and otherwise facilitated my
fieldwork by welcoming me into their community of scholars. Mohamed Ait Hamza of the
Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe provided patient guidance that reinforced the foundation
laid by his extensive scholarship on the region.Yahia Bouabdellaoui of the Institut Agronomique
et Vétérinaire Hassan II was a welcoming interlocutor who related my experiences to the broader
context of Morocco. Myriem Noussairi and Aziz Rahou of the United Nations Development
Program were generous with their time and resources. Many local, provincial, and national
government officials were similarly supportive of my work.
My dissertation committee, Lisa Cliggett, Deborah Crooks, Hsain Ilahiane, Diane King,
and Jerry Skees, mentored me throughout my graduate work, offering me richly diverse
perspectives on how to conduct ethical, relevant research. As my dissertation chair, Lisa Cliggett
was particularly supportive and provided a model for how to become a critically engaged
anthropologist. Hsain Ilahiane provided uniquely helpful guidance based on his experience in the
tamazirt. In the geography department, Morgan Robertson and Tad Mutersbaugh offered critical
feedback at all stages of the project.
I would like to thank my parents, Raymond and Raymonde Rignall, for instilling me with
a curiosity about the world that hinges on ethical engagement and for their unwavering
encouragement. My other parents, Sami and Betty Kalliney, patiently supported us in our various
wanderings; it was their personal sacrifice that enabled the fieldwork to get started at all.
Finally, my thanks go to Peter, who gave me immeasurable support and intellectual
inspiration. This dissertation reflects the space he provided, the theoretical insights he offered,
and the collective adventure that made the experience of fieldwork so rich. Nedjma and Zayd
embraced the experience with their creative resilience, and this dissertation also reflects the many
lessons they taught me.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................................... iii
LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................................................... vii
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................................... viii
Chapter 1--Introduction and theoretical framework ..................................................................................... 1
Overview of the argument ........................................................................................................................ 6
Theoretical framework of the dissertation: a political ecology of land use change .................................. 9
A political economy perspective on land use change ............................................................................. 18
The institutional dimensions of agrarian change .................................................................................... 22
Dissertation overview ............................................................................................................................. 25
Chapter II--Research site and methods ....................................................................................................... 31
Local histories: situating el Harte, Rbat/Imzilne, and el Bour ................................................................ 36
Research methods ................................................................................................................................... 47
Working with households: the organization of domestic life ................................................................. 60
Chapter III--The Mgoun Valley in context ................................................................................................. 65
Ethnographic perspectives on marginality in Mgoun ............................................................................. 67
The not-so-secret prison and the new state of proximity ........................................................................ 71
Mapping poverty in Morocco ................................................................................................................. 75
Useful and useless agriculture ................................................................................................................ 79
Agriculture and the state in Mgoun ........................................................................................................ 85
Chapter IV--Customary institutions and the social life of rural capitalism in Mgoun ................................ 93
Situating the private and the collective in a rural tenure regime ............................................................ 98
The rise of commercial agriculture, exchange values in land, and the mediation of custom ............... 105
The ambivalence of communality in el Harte's diverse economy ........................................................ 116
Chapter V--Land use change the new spatiality of livelihoods ................................................................ 124
Where the oasis ends and the steppe begins: the cultural construction of boundaries ......................... 127
Rooting new forms of mobility in the steppe: land extensions as livelihood transformation ............... 133
Understanding diversity through an analysis of differentiation: case studies....................................... 147
Understanding wealth dynamics in the context of land use change ..................................................... 162
Chapter VI--The practice of agriculture and peasantization in Mgoun .................................................... 168
Spatial dimensions of peasantization .................................................................................................... 174
Farming systems in the era of migration .............................................................................................. 180
Risk management through time ............................................................................................................ 184
Spatial dimensions of farm management .............................................................................................. 187
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Integration in oasis farming .................................................................................................................. 190
What makes this agriculture commercial? ............................................................................................ 192
Profit in the margins ............................................................................................................................. 196
Moving in and out of the market .......................................................................................................... 198
Patterns of differentiation in agriculture ............................................................................................... 203
Furtive home-building and everyday struggles over land .................................................................... 214
Competing enclosures and the right to subsistence .............................................................................. 216
Enclosure: redefining community or a last bulwark against neoliberal tenure? ................................... 226
Chapter VIII--Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 232
A regional political ecology linking land, rights, and livelihoods ........................................................ 236
An institutional perspective: customary tenure regimes and rural capitalism in Mgoun ..................... 237
Household livelihood strategies and land use change .......................................................................... 238
The practice of agriculture and repeasantization .................................................................................. 240
Collective action and competing enclosures in Mgoun ........................................................................ 241
Policy perspectives on livelihoods and land use change ...................................................................... 242
APPENDIX A: NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION .................................................................................. 246
APPENDIX B: GLOSSARY OF TERMS................................................................................................ 247
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................................... 248
VITA ......................................................................................................................................................... 264

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