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Contestation and Mutual Adjustment: The Process of Controlling Land in Yajouz, Jordan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Omar M. Razzaz
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Abstract

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For the past two decades, land in Yajouz has been the locus of fierce contestation between the government of Jordan, the Bani Hasan tribe, and new settlers. Today, Yajouz is a peripheral urban settlement deemed illegal by the government. Three main factors have contributed to the making of Yajouz in its present form: (1) the contested nature of claims to land; (2) the plurality of control mechanisms and ordering of the social and the geographical space, allowing the land market to develop as a semi-autonomous social field; (3) the process of mutual adjustment between state organs and the Yajouz social field, defining the security of tenure among settlers and the social functioning of law. I argue that the Yajouz market does not manifest a traditional phenomenon giving way to modernity; it is rather a modern phenomenon itself shaping and being shaped by the daily functioning of law. In this case, conflicting claims to resources have been catalysts for the development of a semi-autonomous social field, which in turn has engaged state organs in a process of mutual adjustment.

Type
Law and Political Community: Jordanian Settlers and American Marihuana Decriminalization
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , 1994 , pp. 7 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by The Law and Society Association.

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