The displacement of urban households and livelihoods by state institutions is typically justified on the basis of the developmental purposes of land clearance, purportedly in the public interest. However conflicts around such displacement highlight both the contested nature of the 'public interest' and the unequal position that different urban actors are in to shape consensus about what this should constitute. This paper draws on research into the relationship between urban infrastructure development and displacement in Nigeria, to explore how actors negotiate their positions vis a vis displacement through a range of knowledge practices.Displacement and the public interest in Nigeria: Contesting the legitimacy of displacement through knowledge practices.The use of the 'public interest' as a criteria to determine the legitimacy of development induced displacement is widespread, but also problematic in view of both the multiple, and unequally positioned 'publics' involved, and of the contested visions of development which underlie notions of this notion.This tension is thrown into particular relief in the case of Nigeria, where, the notion of the public interest is placed at the heart of the Land Use Act of 1978, which is the chief legal instrument governing compulsory land acquisition (and thus development induced displacement) in the country. However this Act and its associated legal instruments lack clarity on what would constitute the public interest, beyond very broad criteria related to public ownership. This means that in practice the public interest nature of projects causing displacement is debated outside of the legal system, between actors in very different positions to articulate their positions.This paper draws on a research project focused on the linkages between urban infrastructure projects and displacement in Nigeria, to explore how groups involved urban infrastructure projects have used different knowledge practices to promote competing interpretations of the public interest nature of these projects. By 'knowledge practices' we mean the ways in which various actors use, control, and shape different forms of knowledge towards competing outcomes.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.