Theorizing Tenure Restructuring in the Dynamic Metropolitan—Rural Frontier: Bedouin on the boundary of Beer-Sheva Metropolis

  • Tomer Dekel Department of Geography and the Human Environment, Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
  • Avinoam Meir Department of Geography and Environmental Development, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel
Keywords: Frontier; informal settlements; indigenous; tenure; Beer-Sheva metropolis; Bedouin

Abstract

To explore the way the borders of Bedouin informal settlements emerge and transform in the Negev, we construct a theoretical perspective of them as part of a wider spatial dynamic within a metropolizing region. This correlates with a growing political-economic study of the spatial dynamics of informal urbanization in the Global South, where the 'metropolitan frontier' pushes outwards and subsumes rural spaces that are neither fully integrated into the formal, modern market system nor strictly separated from it. The surfacing and re-use of indigenous/national ideology and struggle is understood as a result of the negotiation over incorporation and over material allocation.

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Published
2023-01-22