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- Convenors:
-
Ulrike Schultz
(Adventist University of Friedensau)
Akua Opokua Britwum (University of Cape Coast, Ghana)
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- Chair:
-
Kwaku Arhin-Sam
(Friedensau Adventist University)
- Discussant:
-
Jill Blau
(Adventist University Friedensau)
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- KH115
- Start time:
- 1 July, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
Land rights in Africa are rooted in a range of social and economic relationships. Of particular significance are the consequences of the rapid collapse of communal tenure systems through increased commodification of land. The panel aims to address these processes from a gender perspective.
Long Abstract:
Land rights in Africa are more than just the ownership of land. They are openly rooted in a range of social, political and economic relationships and units including households and kinship networks with multiple identities that are often overlapping and layered in character. Understanding the current trends in land tenure and land rights commodification and appropriation by powerful stakeholders is crucial for engaging relevant processes of social and political change within African societies. Of particular significance are the alternative avenues eventuated by the rapid collapse of communal tenure systems through the increased commodification and subsequent privatization of land. In this situation legal pluralism has the contradictory effect of opening up opportunities to negotiate land rights and resist the appropriation of land by the state, capitalist enterprise and other agents and eroding traditional avenues for groups like women and migrants to access land. Despite the plethora of research and political activism around issues of land grabbing and land commodification in Africa, their gender dimensions are often neglected. Yet, regulatory frameworks of land tenure, be it commons-based traditional institutions or formalized private based titling systems are directly shaped by power relations like gender, class, and race. The panel wants address these issues using an intersectional lens and looking at the overlapping and reinforcing of multiple forms of belonging in the process of land grabbing, land titling and land commodification.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
African women are increasingly mediating their disadvantaged situation in accessing land, thereby constituting themselves as agents in accessing and securing land. This paper examines how women are demonstrating agency and the potential of such, in altering institutions engendering land rights.
Paper long abstract:
Some literature on gender and land rights indicates that women's access to agricultural land is improving due to migration, education and economic changes. The indication is that, while the cultural and social norms inhibiting women's access to, and control over land still exist, women are increasingly taking advantage of migration, education and economic changes to mediate their disadvantaged situation with respect to land and are thereby constituting themselves not as mere victims but as agents in accessing and securing land. This paper seeks to examine how women are demonstrating agency in securing land, the extent to which these strategies reinforce and/or challenge existing gender orders as well as the potential of women's land tenure-making to alter institutions underpinning gendered land rights from an intersectional perspective. The paper draws heavily on secondary data sources as well as the earlier works of the authors in rural livelihoods to argue that, the fact that some women are securing land does not legitimizes the strategies used, nor does it guarantee any secured land tenure for the majority of landless women in Ghana. The need for deliberate, targeted efforts that attack the root causes of insecure gendered land rights is therefore recommended.
Key Words: Agency, Agriculture, Ghana, Gender, Land, Women
Paper short abstract:
How agricultural production relations, rooted in cultural norms regarding sexual division of labour, affects women’s access to land is not well explored. The paper examines the social conception of women’s role in agricultural production, and how that influences their access to agricultural land.
Paper long abstract:
The fact that land rights in Africa are gendered is well documented with several studies pointing to numerous reasons for such discriminatory access. Some studies note the direct connection between land access and agricultural productivity. The manner in which agricultural production relations, deeply rooted in cultural norms regarding sexual division of labour, facilitates or inhibits women's access to land is not well explored. The paper, is an attempt to understand how agricultural production relations determine the social conception of women's role in agricultural production, and how that in turn influences their access to agricultural land. Drawing from a broader empirical work conducted in the Brong-Ahafo, Northern, Upper West and Upper East Regions of Ghana, the paper argues that the social positioning of women in agricultural production relations is the fundamental constraint to their access to land, and on this hinges all the other inhibiting factors. The importance of building knowledge about the agricultural production relations in sub-Saharan Africa for analytical and policy purposes is therefore espoused in the paper.
Key Words: Agriculture, Gender, Ghana, Land, Production-Relations, Women
This paper has been developed in collaboration with Angela Akorsu.
Paper short abstract:
Literature on tropical environmental governance through the lens of intersectionality misses African contexts. Through ethnography of a charcoal formalisation project in Tanzania, I bring new empirical insights, showing how intra- and inter- social group differences shape responses to the project.
Paper long abstract:
There is a small but growing literature that analyse tropical environmental politics and governance through the lens of intersectionality. However, the literature has benefitted more with empirical case studies from Southeast Asia than Africa. This paper brings new empirical insights from the neoliberalised conservation landscapes in rural eastern Tanzania, through an examination of socially differentiated local responses to an anti-deforestation intervention. Basing on the ongoing charcoal formalisation project in Ihombwe and Ulaya-Mbuyuni villages of Rural Kilosa district, the paper studies intra- and inter- 'community' dynamics and associated fabrics and explores the intersections of ethnicity, age and livelihood strategies, and their influences on the responses to the project. Drawing on ethnography of the project, I show how resource-dependent people enforce deliberative spaces within neoliberal conservation to contest, negotiate and reshape existing social fabrics, and challenge the historical domination of the locally superior and powerful social identity system, ukalagale and undewa, 'us'. This tendency of categorical 'us' and the rest as 'others' produce diverse and conflicting social interactions, and privileged and discriminatory practices that shape the local political economy and responses. Consequently, the powerless and marginalised 'others' use the project as an arena for claiming intra- and inter- community sociopolitical and ecological justices, and attaining social recognition. This paper revisits the notion of 'community' in conservation and development studies, suggesting that it is still grossly simplified and misleading, as it brushes aside complex and heterogeneous intra- and inter- social dynamics and local agency. For just outcomes, rural conservation-development interventions should understand and prioritise socially differentiated interests and ambitions during the planning stages.
Paper short abstract:
Women's land rights are more than just the formal ownership of land: culture and social norms and ideologies continue to shape the gender practices and women and girls' decisional power over land is often limited within households and kinship networks in Rwanda.
Paper long abstract:
Rwanda has exhibited the willingness to promote gender equality as a priority within the past twenty-two years. Land tenure reforms have been among the innovations for gender inclusion for sustainable development. Women's land rights in Rwanda are more than just the ownership of land, due to gender practices that continue to shape the social and economic relationships within households. The objectives of this study are the following: to understand how gender practices shape decision-making processes within land tenure systems in Rwanda; to explore how the consequences of the shift from the collective land tenure system (ubukonde) to land commodification have impacted on impact gender relations in Rwanda. The methodology of this paper will include desk review of the theoretical and secondary data analysis, and also empirical data from a qualitative study on 'Compromised Property Rights? Women living in Polygamous or Informal Unions in Rwanda' conducted by the Centre for Gender Studies, at the University of Rwanda. Findings from this study reveal that some women in Rwanda are facing challenges in exercising their land rights as stipulated in the Organic Land Law No. 08/2005 as revised Law no. 43/2013. Legally married women are limited by cultural and social practices, and non-legally married women, whose power is limited by cultural and social practices and the law. This paper will highlight lessons on how land tenure systems are directly being shaped by power relations and gender practices in Rwanda.
Keywords: Rwanda, land tenure systems, gender practices, women's land rights
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I discuss how pastoralists in Germany and Ethiopia continue to manage land as a commons in times of increased commodification.
Paper long abstract:
Pastoralist livelihood is generally characterized by collective land-use strategies and community-based action. These aspects are also very essential for the concept of the commons which evolves all around the use and management of common resources.
Pastoralist collective land governance in Ethiopia and especially Germany is hardly written about. This is not coincidence. It is part of a grander story in which commons-based land use systems, and thereby livelihoods in which reproductive land care plays a major role, are undervalued. With this paper - which is based the findings of my dissertation - I contribute to a feminist re-writing of both the commons and pastoralism. I therefore ask: How do pastoralists continue to manage and use land as a commons in times of increased land enclosure and commodification / privatization? What is the gain in looking at commons from a feminist lens?
Through two case studies at the Nyangatom in South Ethiopia and at the Rechtler in the Oberallgäu / Germany I establish connections between spheres that are inseparable when it comes to sustaining life and natural resources. In pastoralism neither reproductive and productive spheres nor natural resources and their users can actually be divided, as I show through an analysis of the relationship between pastoralists and their land. With an emphasis of the role that gender and other social categories of difference play, I highlight both commonalities and differences between land governance structures and the everyday lives of the herders from the Rechtler (Germany) and Nyangatom (Ethiopia) communities.
Paper short abstract:
Customary communal land (e.g. grazing land) is at the crossroads of land-titling in Danno district, Ethiopia. Based on ethnographic research, this paper analyzes state-driven land formalization programs and their consequences for gender relations on the local level.
Paper long abstract:
Disregarding the different economic and social qualities of land and the prevailing bundles of rights, the ruling Ethiopian government has introduced land-titling programs in order to consolidate the state's ownership rights of rural land. Before these programs were implemented, men and women in Danno district used land for communally grazing following customarily equitable structures. Custom-based institutions (e.g. iddir) used to mediate access to communal land, while socially embedded exchange systems (e.g. sora) used to enable insiders (including women) as well as outsiders (e.g. newcomers) to gain access to communal land. The government's recent attempt to formalize customary land, however, has enabled the state to expand control over the communal land by various means such as "legitimation" and "coercion" (Hall et al. 2011). Yet, some male farmers but women have resisted governmental interventions by dividing their land among themselves, maintaining "exclusion" by using force or by mobilizing customary norms. Based on ethnographic research, this paper shows how state-driven land titling programs affect customary communal land tenure. Assuming the lens of an intersectional analysis, it looks at how the reconfigurations of a regime of access have altered gender and socio-economic relations in rural Ethiopia. It reveals how the competition between different actors comes with ambiguous consequences in regard to "access" (Ribot/Peluso 2003) and "exclusion" (Hall et al. 2011) for their ability to benefit from communal land.
Paper short abstract:
In 1999, land titling was introduced in Tanzania which guaranteed equal rights to own land for women. However, the social value of customary and religious traditions relating to property have proved resistant to change by statutory means.
Paper long abstract:
The 1990s saw a rising interest in land formalisation programmes in the form of registration and titling of farmland and property as the solution to ongoing conflicts over land on the African continent. The Land Laws of Tanzania, passed by parliament in 1999 encouraged the registration and issuing of certificates to villages and individuals for their land, in the hopes of solving the numerous land disputes and attracting investment. In the new Land Laws, women's equal right to own land and right to the family home was guaranteed, but, this safeguard is contradicted by customary practices and religious precepts. The expectation that titling would lead to tenure security has not been fulfilled and women can still find themselves out of the family home and dispossessed of their land. Land titles have proven to have limited powers to protect women from land grabbing when faced with customs which privilege male family members or adversaries with connections to the centres of power and wealth.
Paper short abstract:
The politics of displacement-related land conflict in Yei River County in South Sudan Keywords: IDPs, Post-conflict, Host communities, Land conflict, South Sudan,
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on empirical evidence from Yei River County in South Sudan, this paper argues that, rather than a temporary phenomenon, displacement may lead to a drastic reorganisation of land occupation and governance. Such reorganisation may become strongly connected to broader political contention. In the case of Yei, existing legal frameworks and institutions are inadequate to deal with land conflicts resulting from massive displacement and return. Crucially, historical grievances result in the displaced no longer being perceived as powerless victims, but as agents of a Dinka agenda to (re)occupy territories in Equatoria, and as perpetrators in land conflict. Such politics of land-control and identity may turn land disputes between displaced people and returnees into a major source of instability. At the same time, those displaced people who are not well-connected politically may lose their land rights.