Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the able-body bias inherent in the ‘labour turn’ of customary land tenure in the vanilla-growing SAVA region of Madagascar. It argues to achieve transformation, there is a need to scrutinize underlying values and principles shaping customary land systems before integrating them.

Paper long abstract:

Across rural sub-Saharan Africa, land is central to livelihood and the general well-being of people. Land, notwithstanding, remains unevenly distributed and managed within pluralistic legal systems of varying constellations of statutory and customary land tenure arrangements. When combined with the increasing pressures on land resources, and conflicts, attention turns to the need for land tenure reform. The neoliberal agenda driving land reform allows for the current hybrid (statutory and customary) land reform policy approaches observed on the continent. While policymakers may regard this as a step forward, customary land tenure systems themselves can be socially unjust. Whitehead and Tsikata (2003) raised the question: what do we know about how customary land tenure systems actually work, and their ability to contribute to more just land tenure regimes under the current integrative policy modus?

Using qualitative interview data from rural residents in the vanilla-growing SAVA region of Madagascar, this paper argues that to achieve transformative land tenure systems in sub-Saharan Africa, there is a need to scrutinize underlying values and principles shaping customary land systems, improve on them, and leverage their adaptive character. Highlighted here, are the underlying able-body bias inherent in the ‘labour turn’ that encapsulates everyday meanings and ideas about land in Madagascar NE SAVA region. These notions risk, alongside all the challenges of the statutory tenure, securing land access and security at the expense of disadvantaged groups. “Able-bodyness” in this view is an intersectional, as well as, a multi-dimensional category consisting of time, place and body elements.