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

Abstract

"For the last two decades, land to the northeast of Amman, Jordan, has been the locus of fierce contestation among the state, the tribes, and new urban settlers. The roots of conflict can be traced to the colonial era, when the British transformed tenure in commonly held cultivated lands into individual ownership, but treated commonly held pastoral land as unowned 'state land.; Today, the ownership and control of pastoral, but rapidly urbanizing, land is being contested by tribes claiming traditional rights, Palestinian refugees claiming use rights, and the state claiming legal ownership. I propose a conceptual framework in which 'legal property rights' represent only one aspect of the complex normative and institutional arrangements used to control land. Two other aspects of land control should be addressed: 'property claims; (reflecting the plurality of competing and conflicting claims) and 'property status' (reflecting the plurality of control mechanisms."