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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.