Land Reform Revisited engages with contemporary debates on land reform and agrarian transformation in South Africa. The volume offers insights into post-apartheid transformation dynamics through the lens of agency and state making. The chapters written by emerging scholars are based on extensive qualitative research and their analysis highlights the ways in which people negotiate and contest land reform realities and politics. By focusing on the diverse meanings of land and competing interpretations of what constitutes success and failure in land reform Brandt and Mkodzongi insist on looking beyond the productivity discourses guiding research and policy making in the field towards an informed view from below. Contributors are: Kezia Batisai, Femke Brandt, Sarah Bruchhausen, Nerhene Davis, Elene Cloete, Tariro Kamuti, Tarminder Kaur, Grasian Mkodzongi, Camalita Naicker, Fani Ncapayi, Mnqobi Ngubane, and Chizuko Sato.
This open access book offers unique in-depth, comprehensive, and comparative analyses of the motivations, context, and outcomes of recent land reforms in Africa. Whereas a considerable number of land reforms have been carried out by African governments since the 1990s, no systematic analysis on their meaning has so far been conducted. In the age of land reform, Africa has seen drastic rural changes. Analysing the relationship between those reforms and change, the chapters in this book reveal not only their socio-economic outcomes, such as accelerated marketisation of land, but also their political outcomes, which have often been contrasting. Countries such as Rwanda and Mozambique have utilised land reform to strengthen state control over land, but other countries, such as Ghana and Zambia, have seen the rise in power of traditional chiefs in managing the land. The comparative perspective of this book clarifies new features of African social changes, which are carefully investigated by area experts. Providing new perspectives on recent land reform, this book will have a considerable impact on scholars as well as policymakers.
An original analysis of American interventions in the developing world, asking what can be done to reduce their economic and human cost. Kapstein shows the conditions under which American policies are most likely to produce political stability, and when they are most likely to fail.
Following the end of World War II in 1945, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spent the next three decades carrying out agrarian reform among nearly one-third of the world’s peasants. This book presents a new perspective on the first step of this reform, when the CCP helped redistribute over 40 million hectares of land to over three hundred million impoverished peasants in the nationwide land reform movement. This land reform, the founding myth of the People’s Republic of China (1949–present) and one of the largest redistributions of wealth and power in history, embodies the idea that an equal distribution of property will lead to social and political equality. Power Over Property argues that in practice, however, the opposite occurred: the redistribution of political power led to a more equal distribution of property. China’s land reform was accomplished not only through the state’s power to define the distribution of resources, but also through village communities prioritizing political entitlements above property rights. Through the systematic analysis of never-before studied micro-level data on practices of land reform in over five hundred villages, Power Over Property demonstrates how land reform primarily involved the removal of former power holders, the mobilization of mass political participation, and the creation of a new social-political hierarchy. Only after accomplishing all of this was it possible to redistribute land. This redistribution, moreover, was determined by political relations to a new structure of power, not just economic relations to the means of production. The experience of China’s land reform complicates our understanding of the relations between economic, social, and political equality. On the one hand, social equality in China was achieved through political, not economic means. On the other hand, the fundamental solution was a more effective hierarchy of fair entitlements, not equal rights. This book ultimately suggests that focusing on economic equality alone may obscure more important social and political dynamics in the development of the modern world.
This book analyzes the new political economy of land reform in South Africa. It takes a holistic approach to understand South Africa’s land reform, assesses the current policy gaps, and suggests ways of filling them. Due to its cross-disciplinary approach, the book will appeal to a broad audience, and will benefit readers from the fields of policy reform, administration, law, political science, political economics, agricultural economics, global politics, resource studies and development studies.
"Land Law Reform examines the wide-spread efforts to reform land law in developing countries and countries in transition, drawing in particular upon the experience of the World Bank and the Rural Development Institute. The book considers the role of land law reform in the development process and analyzes how the World Bank has sought to support these legal changes in client countries. It reviews the experience with reform of laws affecting land access and rights in achieving gender equity, identifies opportunities for reinforcing environmentally sustainable development through land law reform, and examines from both growth and poverty alleviation perspectives the effectiveness of reforms to formalize property rights and liberalize land markets. The concluding chapter recommends some basic priorities for land law reforms. John W. Bruce is a senior counsel in the Legal Vice-Presidency of the World Bank, and a former director of the Land Tenure Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published extensively on land law and land policy in developing countries. Renee Giovarelli, David Bledsoe, Leonard Rolfes, and Robert Mitchell are staff attorneys with the Rural Development Institute of Seattle, Washington, a nonprofit organization that promotes and advises on land-related policy and legal reform in developing and transition countries. All have done fieldwork and advised extensively on land law reform and have published widely on this topic."
Summarizes and synthesizes the land reform programs in Latin America over the past 30 years. Considers the political, social, economic, and institutional aspects, and the outcomes, in light of current and future land reform. Paper edition (unseen), $9.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Redistributing land rights is a tricky subject and one that easily becomes controversial as recent experience has shown. This new book calmly examines the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of land redistribution.
Originally published in 2004. The book examines the possibility of resolving past and continuing social injustices that are rooted in colonial or some such other similar experience of states from a variety of perspectives. First the issue is examined from an international law perspective, which evaluates the validity of counter claims to title to land in affected SADC states. Secondly the issue is examined from a human rights perspective, which privileges promotion for the respect of the inherent dignity of all persons. Thirdly, the issue is examined from victimology and psychology schools of thought in order to understand both the effect and impact on stakeholders of the operative dynamics in conflicts that arise from long standing social injustices that are connected to colonial or some such other similar historical experience of States. The book proposes humwefficiency as a model for resolution of this type of conflict. This model targets preservation of the inherent dignity of all stakeholders by combining international human rights morality with local intuition about land ownership and use. In this sense, the book takes human rights theory beyond politics and utopia, and applies it to foster new social engineering technologies for the resolution of social injustices and promotion of social justice. This is justified by the fact that the human rights culture has evolved in a considerably short period of time to become the dominant culture of the world.
A stimulating rethink of contemporary land reform in Scotland from historical, legal, and socio-economic perspectives Land reform is as topical as ever in Scotland. Following the latest legislative development, the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016, there is a need for a comprehensive and comprehensible analysis of the history, developing framework and impact of Scottish land reform. Scholarly yet jargon-free, this landmark volume brings together leading researchers and commentators working in law, history and policy to analyse the past, present and future of Scottish land reform. It covers how Scotland's land is regulated, used and managed; why and how this has come to pass; and makes some suggestions as to the future of land reform. Key features: - Offers a holistic approach to land reform in Scotland; - Draws on case studies of land policies in the UK, mainland Europe and the USA to allow comparison and contextualisation of Scottish land reform with other models; - Examines the significance of right to property on the land reform process, and looks at how it is now being used as an impetus for economic and social rights reform; - Designed to suit individual academic specialisms, while still being accessible to readers across disciplines and professions. Malcolm M. Combe is a Senior Lecturer in law at the University of Strathclyde and non-practising solicitor Jayne Glass is a Land Use Policy Researcher at Scotland's Rural College (SRUC) and Honorary Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh Annie Tindley is a Senior Lecturer in modern British History at the Newcastle University
