Rival jurisdictions on a resource frontier: Law, territorialization, and inscription in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

•Unpacks the legal geographies of resource frontiers.•The concept of jurisdiction is used to study spatial forms of law and authority.•Identifies relationships between jurisdiction and perceptions of conflict.•Jurisdictional authority emerges through law, territorialization, and inscription.•Concept of jurisdiction avoids hierarchical perspective of state and non-state law. Umgungundlovu in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa has the characteristics of a resource frontier; it is the subject of multiple development interventions, as well as the site of ongoing disruptions in governance practices. It is also the location of a significant community-based struggle, led by residents of the village of Xolobeni, for the ‘right to say no’ to imposed development. Some actors narrate this struggle as existing between a ‘community’ demanding a form of autonomy or self-determination against the ‘state’. This narrative identifies land defenders as a numerical minority acting against the national interest, often with violent consequences. It also fails to engage with the localized power relations at stake and ignores entangled forms of legal pluralism that exist. In this paper I approach the struggles in Xolobeni as waged between rival jurisdictions. This perspective provides a way to avoid dichotomous thinking that pits ‘communities’ against the ‘state’. It also offers a framework for studying the practices of making law in conditions of legal pluralism without prioritizing state or non-state law in a hierarchical way. It does this while at the same time illustrating the uneven forms of power relations that exist. The research shows that jurisdictional authority is augmented through law and jurisprudence, processes of territorialization, and local forms of inscription. In conclusion, I argue that examining how rival jurisdictions are augmented in practice offers a way to understand the layered forms of law, power, and authority and their articulation in specific places.