Paper short abstract:

To protect local claims to land, the 2005 land reform law in Madagascar integrated the UN polity format of customary land ownership. The paper will explore the ideas underlying this notion and the effects it had when implemented as a national law in Madagascar.

Paper long abstract:

In Madagascar, a 2005 land reform law guided by the strategic frameworks of global UN development polity advocates the large-scale privatization of land. The latter objective is to support the development of a private enterprise culture and create topographic maps based on actual land tenure. Hitherto, the land situation has been marked by the legal plurality of different customary and colonial land tenure systems. The principle of public domaniality in particular had often created conflicts with local populations occupying publicly owned land bailed for example to foreign investors. To take into consideration the actual occupation of such public land and protect local claims to land, the 2005 law adopted the global polity format of customary land ownership. The paper will explore the ideas underlying this notion and the effects it had when implemented as a national law in Madagascar. I will argue that the idea of certifying a presumably customary land claim by means of a land title a priori turns the entire system of actual customary local land tenure on its head. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in the coastal areas of SW Madagascar, I will show that the latter is based on the concrete working of the ground and the maintenance of good relationships with ancestral spirits who guarantee the continuity of political order at the micro-local scale, rather than any form of definite title or prerogative. In this sense, the introduction of the notion of "customary land property" initiates a rupture and fundamental change in the regimes of governance associated with land and local society.