Abstract
In this paper, the focus is on land dispossession instigated by large corporations, and the way they produce spaces of colonial persistence through particular structures and sovereignty systems that differ from the state-based administrative settings in which they are located. The study looks at phenomena that can be observed on large agricultural estates, particularly in the Teita sisal plantation in Taita-Taveta county in Kenya. This is one of the largest sisal estates in the world, established during colonial times. It is a corporation that uses migrant workers to avoid potential conflicts with the neighbouring communities which still consider those fields to be their own ancestral land. Different working tasks are racialized, and functioning bodies are exploited as resources that have to be maximised. Inside the camp, life and work are regulated with meticulous biopolitical order in restricted conditions. Patrolled borders and gates maintain distance from the local communities who claim the estate is expanding, dispossessing them of land, roads and the river, and repositioning them as squatters on what they see as their ancestral land. In relation to this private company, the national state values its taxation contributions and does not question the exceptional conditions of exploitation of human and environmental resources occurring within that space. The estate was accessed in 2013 and interviews took place then and later. This case study reveals situations of oppression on both sides of the estate borders, including struggles that remain fragmented and hidden. There is a need for new solidarity linkages between groups confronting land and other resource dispossession on a wider scale, to support their political empowerment and rights to human and environmental justice.
Highlights
This article contributes to the understanding of social realities within large-scale agrarian schemes in Africa through the analytical concepts of colonial continuity and space of exception
The focus is on a sisal estate in Kenya, established in the early 1920s and still centrally positioned in the global agribusiness network
It became evident that relations between the estate and external communities were hostile, and that local people living outside the estate could not rely on measures based on legal norms or political advocacy to safeguard their rights against the estate
Summary
This article contributes to the understanding of social realities within large-scale agrarian schemes in Africa through the analytical concepts of colonial continuity and space of exception. Land Use Policy 99 (2020) 104964 territorialised space defined as a space of exception (Agamben, 2005; Gregory, 2006; Minca, 2017) This allows to look beyond the economic or financial success of the company, and to capture the human rights issues entangled in the company’s mode of production and territorial organisation. I look at the case study, a sisal scheme based on ancestral land, and analyse its web of political, economic and territorial relations that guarantee its per sistence in Kenya as a site of production and biopolitical control. Methodological issues are discussed in relation to the challenges of conducting critical social research in a tightly controlled space, sug gesting the importance of at least researching it from the outside, where disposable bodies, losses and daily struggles are evident
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