Abstract
Abstract This article investigates an instance of frontier modernisation by focusing on the ways in which the concept of the desert operated in the contemporary imagination; and how descriptive claims over land determined a reform programme that radically interrupted the developmental arc of a region which, owing to its economic, social and environmental liminality, had remained largely insulated against tax collection, census-data gathering, land surveying and other forms of social control. The official appearance of a 'desert' in northeastern Morocco had little to do with climatic categories, but rather served as a thin justification for modernist reform, capitalist exploitation and state intervention into the lives of pastoralists, all of which contributed to the veritable creation of a desert region sui generis.
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