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

For the past two decades, land in Yajouz has been the locus of fierce contestation between the government of Jordan, the Bani Hasan tribe, and new settlers. Today, Yajouz is a peripheral urban settlement deemed illegal by the government. Three main factors have contributed to the making of Yajouz in its present form: (1) the contested nature of claims to land; (2) the plurality of control mechanisms and ordering of the social and the geographical space, allowing the land market to develop as a semi-autonomous social field; (3) the process of mutual adjustment between state organs and the Yajouz social field, defining the security of tenure among settlers and the social functioning of law. I argue that the Yajouz market does not manifest a traditional phenomenon giving way to modernity; it is rather a modern phenomenon itself shaping and being shaped by the daily functioning of law. In this case, conflicting claims to resources have been catalysts for the development of a semi-autonomous social field, which in turn has engaged state organs in a process of mutual adjustment.