Unpacking “Accumulation By Dispossession”, “Fictitious Commodification”, and “Fictitious Capital Formation”: Tracing the Dynamics of Bahrain's Land Reclamation

Abstract

We explore the interrelationships between the concepts of fictitious commodities, fictitious capital and accumulation by dispossession. We do so through a detailed examination of the dynamics of land reclamation in the Kingdom of Bahrain during the years 2001-2014. Particularly, we dissect in-depth the ensemble of social relations and chain of events involved in two specific real estate projects, Norana and Bahrain Financial Harbour, that have come to symbolize Bahrain's neoliberal era. Reclamation was a unique process in which land was explicitly produced as a commodity for market purposes. Primary material of land deeds, company registration documents, and news articles were used to map out the social relations across the state-finance-real estate nexus. We emphasize that our understanding of accumulation by dispossession involving land is greatly enhanced if we view it as a process of reconfiguring the ensemble of social relations using fictitious commodification and fictitious capital formation.

The Financialisation of Rental Housing 2.0: Releasing Housing into the Privatised Mainstream of Capital Accumulation

“…The dividing line between financialisation 1.0 and 2.0 therefore remains thin: some listed funds still adopt investment techniques typical of private equity funds and vice versa. In other words, we do not consider the endeavours of listed real estate companies as more “friendly” or “patient” per se; the creation of shareholder value is the prime consideration; both financialisation 1.0 and 2.0 constitute and reconstitute capital accumulation, either through pure speculation or through strategies of expanded reproduction (see AlShehabi and Suroor ).…”

“…These strategies of “expanded reproduction” can be considered as a continuation of the more “primitive” strategies of private equity funds, albeit with different means and considering a longer time frame (cf. AlShehabi and Suroor ).…”

“…We show that the more aggressive phase of financialisation 1.0 was a prerequisite to launch the “expanded reproduction” of dispossessed housing as an income‐producing financial asset. Albeit qualitatively different, both stages are part of the “ongoing process of social reconfiguration that imposes logics of (fictitious) commodification and fictitious capital formation on land” (AlShehabi and Suroor :837–838). Therefore, we also show that the boundaries between 1.0 and 2.0 and, accordingly, between private equity and hedge funds on the one hand, and REITs and listed real estate companies on the other, are not as clear‐cut as they seem and that both stages make up for what Harvey () considers a wider pattern of “accumulation by dispossession”.…”

Neoliberalisation from the Ground Up: Insurgent Capital, Regional Struggle, and the Assetisation of Land

“…Mobilising land as a financial asset is a fraught process. Assetisation relies on the ability to monetise (through borrowing) narratives as to potential future value—fictitious capital formation (AlShehabi and Suroor ; Harvey ). New spatial use‐values must be sculpted which are amenable to profitability and the presumed magnitude of future income, particularly as recorded in the financial accounts, determines how much creditors are willing to lend and on what terms.…”

Legal Technologies of Primitive Accumulation: Judicial Robbery and Dispossession‐by‐Restitution in Warsaw

“…References to law also feature in more recent articulations of primitive accumulation under neoliberalism, including in David Harvey's () notion of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (hereinafter: AbD). However, even works that acknowledge the role of law in facilitating primitive accumulation (Harvey, ; Glassman, ; Levien, ; Hall, ; Adnan, ; AlShehabi and Suroor, ; Tilley et al ., ) pay little conceptual attention to concrete legal and judicial mechanisms. Thus Hall's (: 1190) sweeping complaint that ‘while capitalism requires an institutional and legal framework, the literature has almost nothing to say about this framework's relationship to primitive accumulation’ remains largely valid.…”