Classifying Like a State: Land Dispossession on Eastern Crete’s Contested Mountains

Ioanna P Korfiati

doi:10.1111/anti.12640

Abstract

AbstractDespite the widespread attention to capital investments in land and property around the globe, the active re‐regulating role of the neoliberal state in processes of “accumulation by dispossession” remains underexplored. Through an in‐depth look at the dispossession of highly fragmented and loosely regulated private land for windfarm investments on Crete’s eastern corner, Sitia, this paper re‐affirms the political nature of the forcible appropriation of land for large‐scale investments; dissects the specific mechanisms in which the state dispossesses land on behalf of investors and promotes the forcible appropriation of land from below; and problematises the dialectic relationship of both rupture and continuity between crisis and inherited, path‐dependent relations embedded in land. The transformation of Sitia’s loosely regulated, informal relations on land is made possible through the mobilisation of the state’s bureaucratic and normalising powers, which redefine the concept of forest and dispossess through classifying land as such.

Highlights

Since the 1980s, the world “fever” of capital investments in land and property has attracted significant and growing scholarly attention: from political ecology (Calvario et al 2017; White et al 2012), peasant studies (Jansen 2015), Marxism and political economy (Oya 2013), anthropology (Li 2014) and sociology (Levien 2013) to the World Bank (2011) mainstream economics, the “land grab” debate has been investigated from myriad different angles
While the “global land grab” has become a “catch-all phrase” (Borras and Franco 2010), it is no surprise that most academic efforts focus on cases of dispossession in the global South: this is where thousands of acres of land have been dispossessed, an unprecedented proportion of people displaced and livelihoods destroyed
Antipode published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Antipode Foundation Ltd. They declassify the areas [from private agricultural], they go to the forestry authorities, they pay the public fee etc., and they say, “I’ll make a windfarm”

Summary

Introduction

Since the 1980s, the world “fever” of capital investments in land and property has attracted significant and growing scholarly attention: from political ecology (Calvario et al 2017; White et al 2012), peasant studies (Jansen 2015), Marxism and political economy (Oya 2013), anthropology (Li 2014) and sociology (Levien 2013) to the World Bank (2011) mainstream economics, the “land grab” debate has been investigated from myriad different angles. This paper seeks to reaffirm the active role and the specific ways in which the neoliberal state dispossesses rural private land through an in-depth look at a large-scale renewable energy investment on Crete’s Eastern corner, Sitia, where Terna Energy, the investing company, aims to construct a €276,500,000 “hybrid” power plant.

Results

Conclusion