Land grabbing through unlivability: Necro-scapes and slow violence in the expansion of conservation regimes in Tanzania

Abstract

Land grabbing is a persistent and highly dynamic global phenomenon whereby people's power over territories are alienated through multiple and ever-changing strategies. In this article, I examine these shape-shifting strategies and mechanisms that continue to deprive people of land, livelihoods, and autonomy. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and document analysis, I study land grabbing for conservation purposes in Tanzania, focusing especially on the important and ongoing case of the Maasai dispossession from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA). Engaging slow violence and developing the concept of necro-scapes, I argue that land grabbing in NCA works significantly through mechanisms and tactics that make its environments hostile and its landscapes unlivable for inhabitants. These include, among others, the denial of social service, the prohibition of specific livelihood strategies, exposing communities to dangerous wildlife, and deepening border regimes, especially in relation to climate change. Complementing more overt and direct forms of violence through eviction and police force, these mechanisms constitute strategies of land grabbing that are indirect, covert, structural, and slow, but no less devastating. Scholars interested in land, coloniality, and conservation, as well as activists and allied organizations must work to carefully trace these hydra-headed tactics of land grabbing in support of projects for rural autonomy, decolonization, and resource sovereignty.