Promotional Information

An ethnographic study of Zimbabwe's land occupations that focuses on the effects of spatialized struggles on sovereignty and the nation-state

Table of Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
Abbreviations xix
Introduction: Situated Struggles 1
Part I. Governing Space
1. Lines of Dissent 35
2. Disciplining Development 68
3. Landscapes of Livelihood 96
Part II. Colonial Cartographies
4. Racialized Dispossession 129
5. The Ethnic Spatial Fix 153
6. Enduring Evictions 184
Part III. Entangled Landscapes
7. Selective Sovereignties 219
8. Spatial Subjection 250
9. The Traction of Rights and Rule 281
Epilogue: Effective Articulations 310
Notes 323
References 365
Index 387

About the Author

Donald S. Moore is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a coeditor of Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference, also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

"This widely suggestive book--a model of hospitable thought--combines erudition, theoretical insights, and literary inventiveness with well-crafted ethnography. In the process, it rewrites not only the histories of land, but also the histories of life, race, and sovereignty in Zimbabwe."--Achille Mbembe, author of On the Postcolony "Suffering for Territory is an outstanding work of scholarship, which combines innovative theory with vivid ethnographic detail to produce an unusually illuminating view of land, livelihoods, and politics in contemporary rural Zimbabwe. With enormous erudition and keen observational insight, Donald S. Moore shows convincingly how both territories and the subjects who inhabit them can be understood as the contingent products of dynamic social and historical processes. The book's combination of sophisticated theoretical analysis and deep ethnographic understanding makes it one of the most important contributions to the anthropology of Africa to appear in recent years."--James Ferguson, author of Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt "Donald S. Moore's Suffering for Territory is a paradigm-shattering work in agrarian studies. Combining an impressive ethnographic study of land struggle in contemporary Zimbabwe with critical theories of sovereignty, hegemony, and race, Moore decisively and masterfully rereads the history of Zimbabwe and southern Africa through the prism of settler colonialism, colonial capitalism, and their legacies."--Elizabeth A. Povinelli, author of The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism "Moore has produced a comprehensive analytical history of the land question in Kaerezi District... Includes useful maps of the Nyanga and Kaerezi districts; numerous photos illustrating landscapes and Kaerezian peoples; and extensive footnotes and bibliography. Highly recommended."--M.E. Doro, Choic "[T]he book tells of an important era in the history of Zimbabwe. It illustrates well a variety of relations that have been unfolding before and since independence. It provides useful insights into relations of power, control and territory."--M. F. C. Bourdillon, Development and Change "Suffering for Territory is one of those rare monographs that has much to offer to numerous audiences as it interlayers a sophisticated theoretical analysis with highly insightful historical and ethnographic detail. It also combines a carefully situated political and ethical commentary with an engaging writing style that easily carries the reader through a rich landscape while conveying a historicized terrain of power and struggles, localized vulnerabilities, and ironic humor." --Blair Rutherford, African Studies Review "This is a significant and striking book."--Terrence Ranger, Africa "Suffering for Territory is an important and timely contribution to Zimbabwe's social history...It is to be highly recommended...and is one of the best anthropological works on Zimbabwe to be published in the last decade" --Andrew Hartnack, Journal of Contemporary African Studies "Anthropologist Donald Moore has produced a path-breaking study of place and the cultural politics of dvelopment in Africa. From the opening pages of this provocative new work, the reader is treated to an evocative, at times poetical, prose... Suffering for Territory is remarkable in its theoretical ambitions ... The book is at once highly readable and theoretically complex, is an enormous scholarly achievement that is destined to take a place among the most influential contemp orary works in agrarian studies."--ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING D: SOCIETY AND SPACE, volume 24 "[Moore] interacted with the people of Kaerezi in a remarkably intimate and empathetic way... he writes beautifully, evoking a remarkable landscape. He tells a story which speaks for itself, and he makes it tell everything it contains."--AFRICA " ... Suffering for Territory is an important and timely contribution to Zimbabwe's social history. It also provides new and insightful ways to examine the current political and land-based struggles in contemporary Zimbabwe. It is to be highly recommended to those interested in land, livelihoods and politics in southern Africa, and is one of the best anthropological works on Zimbabwe to be published in the past decade."--Jrnl of Contemporary African Studies "Suffering for Territory is an important and timely contribution to Zimbabwe's social history...It is to be highly recommended...and is one of the best anthropological works on Zimbabwe to be published in the last decade" Andrew Hartnack, Journal of Contemporary African Studies "Suffering for Territory is one of those rare monographs that has much to offer to numerous audiences as it interlayers a sophisticated theoretical analysis with highly insightful historical and ethnographic detail. It also combines a carefully situated political and ethical commentary with an engaging writing style that easily carries the reader through a rich landscape while conveying a historicized terrain of power and struggles, localized vulnerabilities, and ironic humor." Blair Rutherford, African Studies Review "Anthropologist Donald Moore has produced a path-breaking study of place and the cultural politics of development in Africa. From the opening pages of this provocative new work, the reader is treated to an evocative, at times poetical, prose... Suffering for Territory is a highly original piece of ethnographic writing. Moore has succeeded in merging past and present, theory and ethnography, and the local and the global into a seamless narrative. The book is a postdisciplinary triumph that effortlessly blends social theory with the concepts and analytics of anthropology, history, and geography." Roderick P Neumann, Environment and Planning D "Moore brilliantly tells the story of a complicated and contested territory wedged between the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border and Nyanga National Park, and how the fate of its people became entangled with anticolonial and postcolonial politics." Alan Smart, Africa Today "This book rewrites academic debate over land, environment and power in Zimbabwe, and beyond, and if non-specialists find some of its narrative dense and too hard to penetrate, then I urge them to read on and persevere, for this book is truly a remarkable achievement." Joost Fontein, African Affairs "This is a remarkable book in many ways. For the author not only observed 'the natives,' as anthropologists are wont to do, he actually joined them. As a result, he provides a vivid picture of life in a resettlement area, beginning with the building of his own hut in the village and going on to the planting of trees and the mediation of local land disputes." Elaine Windrich, H-Net Reviews, H-SAfrica "This is a significant and striking book." Terrence Ranger, Africa "Using well researched and brilliantly presented ethnographies and social histories of the Tangwena People's Kaerezi Ranch (one of the most symbolic arenas in the struggle for independence and racial equality), Moore sifts through the 'sediments' of history and present day dynamics to tell a story of how the contemporary spatial and agrarian structure emerged and is articulated in the lived experiences of villagers in Nyamutsapa (the location of most of his field work)." Admos Osmund Chimhowu, Journal of Agrarian Change "Moore has produced a comprehensive analytical history of the land question in Kaerezi District... Includes useful maps of the Nyanga and Kaerezi districts; numerous photos illustrating landscapes and Kaerezian peoples; and extensive footnotes and bibliography. Highly recommended." M.E. Doro, Choice "[T]he book tells of an important era in the history of Zimbabwe. It illustrates well a variety of relations that have been unfolding before and since independence. It provides useful insights into relations of power, control and territory." M. F. C. Bourdillon, Development and Change "[T]he text has a thorough theoretical grounding, which is backed up by Moore's fieldwork." Cameron McCormick, Cultural Geographies "[A] highly interesting book... [Moore's] ethnography is rich and detailed... Moore tries to provide the reader not only with a detailed case study, but also with a new theoretical framework to analyse natural resource conflicts. In my opinion he wonderfully succeeds in this endeavour, ..." Marja Spierenburg, Journal of Modern African Studies