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Social Reproduction and Informal Land Tenure in Jamaica City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2017 Capture and Abandon: Social Reproduction and Informal Land Tenure in Jamaica Rachel Goffe The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2398 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] CAPTURE AND ABANDON: SOCIAL REPRODUCTION AND INFORMAL LAND TENURE IN JAMAICA by RACHEL GOFFE A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Earth and Environmental Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2017 © 2017 RACHEL GOFFE All Rights Reserved ii Capture and Abandon: Social Reproduction and Informal Land Tenure in Jamaica by Rachel Goffe This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Earth and Environmental Sciences in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date Dr. Ruth Wilson Gilmore Chair of Examining Committee Date Dr. Cindi Katz Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Dr. Ruth Wilson Gilmore Dr. Cindi Katz Dr. Don Robotham THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Capture and Abandon: Social Reproduction and Informal Land Tenure in Jamaica by Rachel Goffe Advisor: Dr. Ruth Wilson Gilmore Capture and Abandon: Social Reproduction and Informal Land Tenure in Jamaica examines how ongoing policy development to curtail squatting is shifting state capacity away from a project of land reform and towards one of land management. Scholarship about informal settlements elsewhere tends to understand dispossession as a project of the neoliberal state. I argue that it is strategically necessary to elucidate the ways in which the production of durable but insecure access to land is not novel, but is imbricated in the historical production of a Black labor force that is self-sufficient and yet ready at hand, reproducing themselves through what I— following Sylvia Wynter—call “working a plot.” This investigation puts into relation Cindi Katz’s concept of topography—an ethnography of a process—with Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s examination of key surpluses and their reconfiguration in moments of capitalist crisis. Through ethnographic research regarding emerging state practices as experienced by residents, I examine how surpluses of land, labor, and state capacity are made idle and are only partially repurposed. In taking up the concept of surplus state capacity as method, I explain how transformations of the state are the “restless outcome” of contradictory iv traditions—of Black rebellion, and on the other hand, of making a future adequate to capitalist development. This dissertation is based on seven months of fieldwork including interviews with state agents and 3-1/2 months of ethnographic research at a location where residents had been served with eviction notices. As with other recent sites of eviction in Jamaica, the settlement was seen as being in conflict with a new tourist resort. A former sugar estate, this site is now at the interface between land made surplus by agricultural disinvestment and a boom in tourism development. As a result, daily life of informal residents traverses uneven development: inadequate roads, water supply, storm drainage, electricity, and sewage infrastructures. This “organized abandonment” lies in full view of new investments in highway, water mains, sewage treatment facilities, resorts, and tourist activity centers. This renders less efficient residents’ work to reproduce themselves, deepening the subsidy to capital. Yet despite evictions and the uneven development of infrastructure, there are remains within the state that resist the delegitimizing of residents’ claims to land in informal settlements. As such, the site presented an opportunity to investigate contradictions within the postcolonial state, contradictions that shape which residents are understood to be in legitimate possession of the land. Though offered a pathway to regularization, residents were unable to fulfill its legal requirements. Portrayed by regulators as their “failure,” this characterization renders invisible the historical and ongoing processes through which they and so many others come to be in durable possession, but not owners, of land. This research also reveals the futurity of capture: beyond merely possessing a square of land, or meeting one’s basic needs, capture is about inserting oneself adjacent to Jamaica’s emerging landscapes of development; the very instability of capturing land reveals a deeper opposition to the concept of property-in-land than is immediately v apparent. The contradiction evident in policy formation regarding squatting—producing uneven dispossession—has something to do with the recuperation of a sanitized version of the Black small farmer as an agriculturalist. Judged against this respectable figure, the “illegal squatter” is not recognized as a descendant of Black refusal. vi To my father who gave me the ground I dig my heels into, and To my mother who tended the earth, as relentlessly as seasons change Together ground and earth, A love supreme vii Acknowledgements My deepest gratitude to the residents of the place I call Tulloch and all the others who gave of their time and trusted me with their stories. I hope I have done them some justice, and that I will continue to do so. I went to graduate school fueled by a disquiet with my lack of capacity to explain, as an architect, the dramatic shifts in the built environment in Philadelphia where I lived: the implosion of public housing beginning in the 1990s when I was in architecture school, the flurry of eminent domain condemnations in the 2000s around which my initial activism formed, and continuing through the ongoing real estate boom. My comrades, in particular, Nijmie Dzurinko, Sarah Stefana Smith, Phil Wider, and Todd Wolfson, in the Anti-Displacement Solidarity Committee—a committee of Philadelphia Incite!—and the Media Mobilizing Project engaged me in inquiry and political education that provided clarity for our activism, a union that continues to inspire me. Thank you to all of you named and unnamed who helped to make this a reality, finally: To Dr. Charlene Sinclair, my “dissertation buddy,” sister-scholar-activist-friend, whose excitement about my project, and mine about hers, birthed over DuBois, blossomed over Burmese food, and distilled over tequila at her backyard picnic table. We got our heads straight, and got to the end! To my best friend, Tanya-Sue Young, who put a roof over my head during fieldwork, who always asks the right questions and is never afraid to ask the hard ones. Thank you for showing up for me even when I don’t know to ask. You know me better than anyone. To my sweet aunty, Hilary Sherlock, for evening debriefings of all those days of libraries and government offices and viii always being so happy to see me when I finally turn up. We shall eat ice cream in celebration— soon come! To my Kingston cousins—Elizabeth, Marcus, Darryl, Gavin, and Sanya—for love, introductions, dinners, and your love of communities: family, revelry, healing, and social justice. To my aunt Susan whose relentless activism and social media footprint keeps me engaged with and informed about current issues at home. To my fellow GC-ers: FTC Manning, for being damned smart, stubborn, awesome, for keeping me good company, for always being willing to read, and for being a dogged theorist; Annie for modelling a commitment to complexity and emotional truth as a scholar. To Christian Anderson who has been an enthusiastic ally ever since he was nominated to be my mentor way back in my first semester at the GC. Thank you, Christian, for your willing and smart engagements with conference paper, publication, and dissertation chapter drafts over the years. To Jack Gieseking, for bringing into being the Space Time Research Collective (STReaC) and propelling it with the joyous collective spirit that guided many of us through conferences, dissertation proposals, curriculum vitae, job talks, and on and on. To my beloved STReaCers—I dare not list you, but all the collective brain activity rescued me over and over. To Keith Miyake, who is always so generous with his help, so lucid in his summations of literature, and—at the same damn time— stunning in his technical abilities. To Colette Sosnowy, for steadfastly reminding me that the end was in sight. To Ujju Agarwal, who generously shared her embargoed dissertation so that I could learn from her Ruthie-approved “historically informed ethnography.” To my Philly peeps: Pam Raines and LB Young for getting me out of the house on a regular basis (i.e., keeping me sane). Leniqueca Welcome, for Caribbean scholarship over Philly lunches. Dr. Deborah Thomas, for good talks, inspiration, and introducing me to fellow travelers. John Edwards, and Kira Shepherd, for regularly having a place for me to crash so I could ix manage my commuter lifestyle. Adrienne McKinney for giving a cranky architect/PhD student a job and being understanding as I juggled my many responsibilities, not always elegantly. Alia Trindle, my long-suffering housemate while I was writing, Bradley Gardner my sometimes housemate whose intelligent nonchalance offered a welcome counterpoint to my anxiety, and Adam Lemire for being generous … and delivering gold stars when I needed something shiny to keep my spirits up. Kathleen Sprouffske for her lovely house, and before that, along with Kira Shepherd, being my study-buddies/coffee shop soldiers. Daniel Linehan and Tamika Hughes for regular and yet good-natured harassment around goal-setting. To my mother who has always understood the importance of encouraging me, as a woman, to keep going until I get the piece of paper that proves I did all that hard work.
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