The social life of wheat and grapes: domestic land-grabbing as accumulation by dispossession in rural Egypt

Abstract

In the last three decades, Egypt’s rural population has experienced different types of struggle over land as a result of neoliberal land reforms, which have favoured landowners and marginalised tenants’ interests. While the literature highlighted the negative effects on the tenants, little attention was given to what landlords did with the land after the reforms. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2011 and 2013 in five Egyptian villages, the article addresses this lacuna by investigating tenants’ understanding of land-use change. Using a revised conceptualisation of Marx’s metabolic rift, the article shows that evicted tenants understand this shift as part of a domestic land grab that disrupted the ecological system. The article therefore conceptualises land dispossession and domestic land grabs as mutually reinforcing processes and draws particular attention to the sensorial dimensions associated with domestic land grab, in addition to the political and economic dimensions.

Land and small farmer resistance in authoritarian Egypt

“…It may be difficult to assert that protest was part of a collective peasant (class) consciousness. The prism through which farmers objected to poor service provision, water, and transport infrastructure was often in terms of “perceived violation of cultural values, including the sanctity of life and death” and views of justice and honour (El‐Nour et al, 2021, 11; Saad 2016; Ahmed, 2019). Yet this dimension of struggle, and perceived assault on farmer dignity, is part of a dynamic of protest against the policies of the Sisi dictatorship.…”

“…The legislation was intended to draw a halt to the use of agricultural land for building. One estimate is that 400,000 feddans (168,000 ha) had been converted to building from agriculture use since the 1980s although this figure came from a syndicate leader seeking to curry favour from Sisi (Ahmed, 2019). The proposed law was an attempt to regularize the built environment and encourage new construction projects by official contractors under the guise of slum clearance and modernization.…”

“…When agrarian issues were mentioned, they tended to be limited to debating food insecurity and the importance of agricultural trade, land reclamation, and direct foreign investment in “land grabs”. Only recently has there been an attempt to map or account for the character of agrarian transformations under the dictatorship of General Abdel Fattah al‐Sisi (Ahmed, 2019; De Lellis, 2019).…”

“…Small farmer resistance to policies that rewarded larger land holders and a policy that favours export producers, in both the new, reclaimed and old Nile valley and Delta lands, has been recurrent especially since the late 1980s. After the soft coup of 2013, resistance has been restricted but remains evident (Ahmed, 2019; El‐Nour et al, 2021). The GoE has promoted a policy and practice of capital accumulation that has rewarded a landed elite, some of whom are urban‐based, the military, and sections of a post‐2011 revitalized business community.…”