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Paper short abstract:

This presentation argues for a renewed theoretical focus on political economy in land tenure analyses. I discuss how changes to rural land institutions in northeastern Ugandan are embedded in regional-level reorganizations of agrarian and pastoral political economies, as well as state formation.

Paper long abstract:

The fascination with global land grabs draws attention away from analyses of regional and local-level land accumulation and dispossession in rural areas. The latter processes are often predominantly driven by endogenous factors, including (potentially) elite formation, the erosion in power of customary authorities, and state formation. Despite an earlier tradition in land tenure studies, researchers have somewhat lost sight of the importance of these dynamics due to the surge of interest in land grabbing and land governance. In this presentation I seek to reenergize an approach that places theoretical primacy on political economy in analyses of rural land institutions. Specifically, I draw on my fieldwork in northeastern Uganda to discuss how changes to customary land institutions are deeply embedded in broader, regional-level transformations. This includes the reorganization of agrarian and pastoral political economies, but also state formation. Political economy analyses of land tenure must also be historically contextualized, and one of my key arguments is that the current period of political, economic, and cultural transformation in the Teso sub-region constitutes the most prominent period of social differentiation since the early 20th century. While not fantastic in terms of scale, nor easily woven into preexisting metanarratives of neocolonialism and centre-periphery exploitation like global land grabs, rural social differentiation carries far reaching political implications for customary land institutions, as well as for state stability and geopolitics.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper will explore how rural land markets emerge and evolve by investigating indigenous struggles for land in the highland region of Ecuador and drawing out wider empirical and theoretical insights from the case.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I will explore how rural land markets emerge and evolve by investigating indigenous struggles for land in the highland region of Ecuador. Land markets began to develop in the region in the late nineteenth century, but did not start to form fully until land reform commenced in the 1960s. The reform triggered a number changes which stimulated land market activity and provided the basis for the expansion of land markets. Drawing on the social theory of Karl Polanyi, I develop a concept to explore the opportunities and threats the expansion of land markets created for highland indigenous peoples. The concept draws an analytical distinction between two dimensions of the land market: 'activation' and 'development'. The former refers to the occasional participation of actors in markets to secure land, while the latter relates to the establishment of price-making markets which create continuous opportunities for the exchange of land. I argue the activation of markets opened-up spaces for indigenous peoples to secure land, while the development of price-making markets closed them down. The process, which involved complex interactions between formal and informal institutions, generated significant levels of social and political conflict. The case therefore offers support for Karl Polanyi's claim that markets are contested spaces which are constructed and reconstructed through social, political and economic forces. I will conclude the paper by attempting to draw out empirical and theoretical insights for understanding the evolution of land markets elsewhere in the Global South.

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Paper short abstract:

Applying a rule of law lens to land acquisition, this paper analyses India's national reform of its archaic eminent domain law. It concludes that this reform resulted from a legal empowerment process encompassing better awareness of legal rights and market prices of land among rural landowners.

Paper long abstract:

Legal reform assistance programs have historically emphasized state-centric 'supply-side' activities for establishing the rule of law. Recent literature has highlighted that this view ignores the power dynamics underlying reform processes, pointing instead to the role of constituencies within society ('demand-side') that call for, and enforce limitations to the arbitrary exercise of state power.

The rule of law seeks to restrain government action through law, while eminent domain is the State's legal power to take an individual's property. Both of these concepts are seen as enablers of economic development. However, in the context of the global land rush, they are often at odds - the widespread use of eminent domain powers without procedural justice has the potential to undermine people's faith in the rule of law.

Placing the issue of eminent domain within a rule of law framework, I analyse India's national level reform of its archaic eminent domain law. A broad based social movement against the compulsory acquisition of agricultural land in rural West Bengal, culminated in the passage of a new land acquisition law in 2013.

This reform can be viewed as resulting from a legal empowerment process involving rights-based legislation and activism of non-state actors. Specifically, better awareness among rural landowners of their legal rights and the market prices of agricultural land, spurred demand for a new law. Illustrating this case, I argue in favour of the strategic use of legal empowerment and demand-side approaches for sustainable legal reform.

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Paper short abstract:

Despite common perceptions, Ethiopian land tenure contains significant ambiguity due to the co-existence of state ownership with ethnic federalism and neo-customary tenure. The paper examines these competing ideas and institutions on land through a case study of conflict in Oromiya.

Paper long abstract:

There is a common perception that Ethiopia is unusual in Africa in having a relatively uniform system of state land ownership. While highly influential, state ownership is not the only body of law with implications for land administration in Ethiopia. This paper demonstrates that the institutionalization of ethnic federalism and the persistence of neo-customary tenure result in considerable ambiguity in land administration, particularly regarding the land rights of non-indigenous ethnic minorities. The analysis highlights tensions between these three sets of institutions and associated ideas, and their implications for minority land rights. This ambiguity is explored through the analysis of a case study of land-based conflict in Oromiya based on fieldwork conducted in 2009/10. This case study demonstrates the continuing relevance of these three ideas in land debates in Ethiopia, the use of these ideas by protagonists as means of justifying land claims and the ambiguous state response to the conflict, which appears to go well beyond the provisions of the land policy. As such, while there are certainly particular characteristics of the Ethiopian case, many of the key issues regarding ethnicity and land mirror debates taking place across the continent.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how customary land is governed in the Acholi region of Uganda through case studies of group land holdings and the relationships of their members. It considers the boundaries of the notion of public authority with that of intimate governance, and implications for policy.

Paper long abstract:

The study of 'public authority from below' seeks to reform development understandings of de facto institutions by exploring how they are experienced by ordinary people. A defining criterion of public authority, whether state, customary or other, is that it is external to the family, as in 'any social institution or mechanism that exists beyond the immediate family and exercises a degree of voluntary compliance'. The term invites comparative consideration of the private. This is significant in the current context of land reform in northern Uganda. In the Acholi region, most rural land is 'clan land', often described as communally owned. Through a series of case studies, this paper describes the intimate governance of such land, and explores the perceptions of members of land holding groups of land matters as public and private, and of appropriate governance. I argue that many land-holding groups, often presented as customary public authorities, in fact function as 'immediate families', notwithstanding that they may consist of some tens or more households. One consequence is that what might constitute good public governance is divergent in multiple respects from good intimate governance. The land reform debate in Acholi divides along the lines of those who would individuate and title land to households and those who seek to institutionalise and formalise clans as registered communal land holders, with both camps claiming to be offering protection from land grabbing to peasant farmers. Understanding land holding groups as families exposes some of the problems with both these strategies.

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Paper short abstract:

Forest villages were established in state-owned forests in the late nineteenth century to meet the labour requirements of colonial forestry. This paper examines the evolution of property rights and access to cultivable land for Adivasi (indigenous) residents of forest villages in central India in the twentieth century.

Paper long abstract:

Forest tenure regimes in India reflect contested and messy legacies of colonial systems of property and power over rural landscapes. Forest villages represent a unique subset within this, since they were settlements established in state-owned forests to serve the labour requirements of colonial forestry. My research examines historical transformations in state-society relations and indigenous livelihoods in forest villages in the state of Madhya Pradesh in India. The proposed paper seeks to intervene in debates about forest tenure reform in South Asia through an historical anthropology of land access and tenure in the forest villages of upland central India.

Adivasi (indigenous) labourers, who were settled in these villages, had limited access to cultivable land. Based on research in the state archives, I conclude that colonial forest officials relied on coercion, tenure insecurity as well as concessions to extract labour from the residents. I trace the micro-politics of tenure arrangements in the postcolonial period through ethnography in four forest villages. Following Hall, Hirsch and Li (2011), I argue that exclusion from land was governed by powers of force, regulation and legitimation. I highlight the difference between property and access, and the latter’s relationship with sub-national structures of power (Ribot & Peluso, 2003; Sikor & Lund, 2009). The ability of landless villagers to access land through “illegal forest encroachments” was contingent on local networks of patronage and shifts in state forest policy.

In the second part of the paper, I examine counter-exclusionary mobilisations that occurred in the forest villages in the 1990s, and the effects they had on forest access and tenure justice. I also locate the implementation of the national rights-based legislation for forest tenure reform (Forest Rights Act of 2006) in the contestations between Adivasi families, local state and indigenous rights activists in this upland landscape. Finally, I show why collective, inalienable land-tenure regimes, as envisioned in the forest tenure reform debates, might be difficult to realise in practice.