Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2023
Chapter 5 explores the relationship between plunder, property-making, and state power. Focusing on the struggle against the destruction of the Niger Delta in Nigeria, it argues that capital from its inception has operated by turning land into objects that can be owned, appropriated, and sold for profit: a process that, following Traci Brynne Voyles, I call wastelanding. By examining the role of state violence in extractivist projects, the chapter develops a critique of environmentalist initiatives premised on reforming, seizing, and ‘greening’ the state. Instead, it theorises land-based struggles against mega-dams, mines, plantations, oil fields, pipelines, and other extractive projects as part of a wider antipolitical project of refusal.
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