Abstract or Keywords
This article investigates the place of communal land and migratory populations in the colonial modernization projects of the Gharb, Morocco. A combination of ethno-environmental myth and an unerring faith in European-style private property played a preponderant role in shaping rural reform. Bound by international law to uphold "traditional" forms of communal, migratory life, French policy-makers instead transformed the land and juridical cultures that gave such social practices meaning. The resulting "disaster ecologies" of the Gharb-and their devastating human and environmental consequences-were not accidental but central to the realization of a particular brand of colonial modernity in Morocco.