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Contribution short abstract

This article explores the limits of commodification on Nairobi’s urbanising peripheries where land-selling companies harness techniques of equivalence-making to turn land near-‘portable’ (Kockelman 2016), 'enclosing' its colonial histories, 'disclosing' it as an icon of middle-class aspiration.

Contribution long abstract

On Nairobi’s urbanising peripheries, land-selling companies have sprung up to mediate the transfer of land, accumulating vast tranches from unseen elite figures, and re-selling them in parcels to would-be middle-class buyers. In their sales pitches, these companies present ‘land’ as an indistinguishable commodity, disembedded from historical context and setting, capable of catering to the universality of middle-class aspirations. Against this backdrop, this article is about the art of making land seem ‘portable’ – about the extents and limits to which land can be converted into an exchange-value on a ‘real-estate frontier’ (Gillespie 2020). As Tania Li (2014) notes, ‘land stays in place. It cannot be removed.’ Yet by drawing upon the work of Paul Kockelman (2016), I aim to show how land-selling companies do their utmost to uproot land in concept, through equivalence-making techniques that turn ‘land’ into an abstract and generalisable icon. Based on fieldwork amongst land-selling companies, surveyors, prospective buyers, lawyers, and legal clerks, this paper draws attention to the processes through which Kenya's land has been made market-ready. It shows how the ‘grabbed’ colonial origins of land advertised by land-selling companies are ‘enclosed’ and obfuscated through techniques of demarcation, land transfer, and marketing. In turn, plots of land are ‘disclosed’ once more as purified icons of a universal middle-class dream, suitable for house-building or speculation, situated in the non-place of the market.