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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.