Faith in paper: Title deeds, land fraud and anxious subjectivities - the pursuit of middle-class homeownership on Nairobi’s urban frontier
| Dates: | 24 April 2023 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 18:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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Dr Peter Lockwood
Faith in paper: Title deeds, land fraud and anxious subjectivities - the pursuit of middle-class homeownership on Nairobi’s urban frontier
Beginning with scenes of middle-class homes being demolished by bulldozers on the outskirts of Nairobi, this paper turns its attention towards the anxious subjectivities of the city’s emerging middle-class as it seeks to create house and home within a terrain of land grabbing. Describing the manipulation of Kenya’s land registry by unseen forces, it shows how prominent cases of land fraud shape dispositions of cautiousness on the part of new buyers. These buyers extol the importance of undertaking ‘due diligence’, that is, pursuing proper documentation and the official process of acquisition to protect themselves against such misfortunes. Unfolding cases in which documentary evidence has failed, or paper trails run dry, this presentation illuminates the underlying risks of having faith in the fixity and obduracy of title deed documents when they fail to live-up to their exclusionary premise. The paper concludes by discussing the inherently speculative and uncertain practice of pursuing middle-class homeownership within a broader political economy of predation and dispossession.
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