Land Rights

Citation:

Ryan, Caitlin. 2017. “Large-Scale Land Deals in Sierra Leone at the Intersection of Gender and Lineage.” Third World Quarterly 39 (1) : 189-206.

Author: Caitlin Ryan

Abstract:

There is wide engagement with large-scale land deals in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly from the perspectives of development and international political economy. Recently, scholars have increasingly pointed to a gendered lacuna in this literature. Engagement with gender tends to focus on potential differential impacts for men and women, and it also flags the need for more detailed empirical research of specific land deals. This paper draws from ethnographic data collected in Northern Sierra Leone to support the claim that the impacts of land deals are highly gendered, but it also argues that lineage in a land-owning family and patronage intersect with these gendered impacts. This data supports my claim that analysis of land deals should start from an understanding of the context-dependent, complex arrays of power and marginality. Such a starting point allows for a wider and ‘messier’ range of impacts and experiences to emerge.

Keywords: land deals, Sierra Leone, gender patronage

Topics: Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Land Grabbing, Political Economies, Rights, Land Rights Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Sierra Leone

Year: 2017

Citation:

Tsikata, Dzodzi, and Joseph Awetori Yaro. 2014. “When a Good Business Model Is Not Enough: Land Transactions and Gendered Livelihood Prospects in Rural Ghana.” Feminist Economics 20 (1): 202–26.

Authors: Dzodzi Tsikata, Joseph Awetori Yaro

Abstract:

Recent large-scale commercial agriculture projects in developing countries have raised concerns about the effects on natural resource-based livelihood activities of local people. A significant weakness in the emerging literature is the lack of a gender perspective on implications for agrarian livelihoods. This article explores the gendered aspects of land transactions on livelihood prospects in the Northern Region of Ghana. Drawing on qualitative research from two commercial agriculture projects, the article examines how pre-existing gender inequalities in agrarian production systems, as well as gender biases in project design, are implicated in post-project livelihood activities. The article concludes that a good business model of a land deal, even one that includes local communities in production and profit sharing, is not sufficient to protect women's livelihood prospects if projects ignore pre-existing gender inequalities and biases, which limit access to opportunities.

Keywords: business model, commercial agriculture, commons, Gender, land tenure, livelihoods

Topics: Agriculture, Economies, Economic Inequality, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Land Tenure, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Ghana

Year: 2014

Citation:

Author: Allison Margaret Bigelow

Abstract:

Histories of colonial Latin American mining have cemented the image of a scientifically backward society whose pursuit of easy wealth sacrificed the lives of indigenous and African miners in places like Potosí. By examining a mid-seventeenth-century mine dispute between an Andean woman and a Spanish man, this article suggests how legal archives can reveal indigenous women’s contributions to the history of colonial silver. It also provides an appendix with one hundred cases of indigenous, creole, and Spanish women miners, refiners, and managers in Alto Perú, 1559–1801, suggesting how women of different socioeconomic and technical backgrounds participated in the silver industry.

Keywords: colonial science, technical literacies, law, gender, Andes

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Economies, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Indigenous, Rights, Land Rights Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Bolivia, Peru

Year: 2016

Citation:

Author: Christiana O. Johnson

Annotation:

"Paradoxically, grassroots opposition is often at its most intense in villages where the DFID community forestry project has been working most vigorously. The Forestry Commission and the DFID Community Forestry Management Project acknowledge youth's periodic 'wars' against project and Park staff, but seem (gender?) blind to growing resistance by an even more marginalised social category - women from the poorest two-thirds of households - who object to forest alienation and clear felling. Women do most of the farming and non-timber forest products harvesting, but in many forest edge villages they are a politically and jurally subordinated category; they are denied customary rights to own and manage land cleared inside thick forests that their sisters in more remote tropical high forest villages still claim and enforce" (Johnson, 2003, p. 160).

Topics: Economies, Poverty, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, International Organizations, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Nigeria

Year: 2003

Citation:

Delgado, Juana Vera. 2015. “The Socio-Cultural, Institutional, and Gender Aspects of the Water Transfer-Agribusiness Model for Food and Water Security: Lessons Learned from Peru.” Food Security 7 (6): 1187–97.

Author: Juana Vera Delgado

Abstract:

This paper critically analyses the potentials and frontiers of an agribusiness model developed along the arid coastal area of Peru. To make this model work, water from Andean rivers and lakes have been dammed and transferred to the coastal area through sophisticated and highly expensive hydraulic infrastructures. Although this ‘water transfer-agribusiness’ (WATA) model has attained its objectives to let the desert bloom and increase agro-exports from Peru, it does so at the cost of local environmental degradation, social unrest and gender disparities. These unintended consequences arose, in part, because the WATA model is anchored in ideologies of domination of nature and colonization of empty territories. The construction of water infrastructure, namely ‘Large Scale Irrigation’ (LSI) left aside the sociocultural, gender, and environmental aspects that these kinds of interventions should include. Based on studies of water transfer from the Colca River to the ‘Pampas de Majes’ in the Arequipa region in the south-west of Peru, this paper analyses, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the consequences of such interventions on the food/water security and environmental health of the affected population (Abstract from original source​).

Keywords: water transfer, agribusiness, large-scale irrigation, Gender, ethnicity, water insecurity, food insecurity

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Agriculture, Development, Environment, Food Security, Gender, Gender Analysis, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Multi-National Corporations, Rights, Land Rights, Security Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Peru

Year: 2015

Citation:

Author: Anna Naupa

Annotation:

Summary:

"While land reform was a key political driver of Vanuatu’s Independence in 1980, land policy reform only recently returned to the political arena in the mid-2000s. Finding the space to raise awareness about women’s land rights in a Vanuatu land reform context is challenged by competing reform priorities, such as redress mechanisms for unscrupulous deals, customary conflict resolution, and anti-corruption measures that had been overlooked for a couple of decades. Predominantly viewed as a male domain, the absence of women is notable in land discussions. Women have been largely invisible in state-managed land decisions, not least due to exclusionary practices by the males who control access to land in the traditional arena. Compounded by the primacy of customary land practice enshrined by Vanuatu’s Constitution and state reinforcement of such gender bias, advocating for women’s land rights—and women’s rights in general—has required culturally and politically strategic approaches to finding a place in the land reform agenda.

"This paper analyses the different strategies used to raise awareness and advocate for the recognition of women’s rights to land in Vanuatu’s policy reform context. Given the cultural context in Vanuatu, it has been necessary to adopt an advocacy model that goes beyond framing the language of rights within accepted socio-cultural constructs, to also address the political-economic dimensions of gendered access to land through identifying male champions, and to combine both upstream (awareness-raising) and downstream (coalition-building) advocacy paths. Future advocacy efforts must include greater engagement by women themselves, not just their advocates, for reform efforts to be sustainable (Naupa, 2017, 306)."

Topics: Gender, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Land Grabbing, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Oceania Countries: Vanuatu

Year: 2017

Citation:

Mutopo, Patience. 2014. Women, Mobility and Rural Livelihoods in Zimbabwe: Experiences of Fast Track Land Reform. Boston: Brill Publishers.

Author: Patience Mutopo

Abstract:

This book through detailed ethnographic methodology investigates the role women play in a post fast track land environment. The author examines how the hidden access to land, enabled the women to engage in agro based livelihoods and transitory mobility through social networks (WorldCat).

Annotation:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication

List of Illustrations

Acronyms and Terminology

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1. Setting the Research Agenda and the Conceptual Framework

Chapter 2. Methodology

Chapter 3. Description of the Study Area

Chapter 4. The Early Beginnings of Merrivale Farm

Chapter 5. Merrivale Farm during and after Fast-Track Land Reform, 2000–2010

Chapter 6. Access to Land and the Shaping of Livelihoods at Tavaka Village, Merrivale

Chapter 7. Life beyond Merrivale Farm: Preparation for and Trading in South Africa

Chapter 8. Conclusion

References

Index

Topics: Gender, Women, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 2014

Citation:

Unruh, Jon, and Rhodri Williams. 2013. Land and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding. New York: Routledge.

Authors: Jon Unruh, Rhodri Williams

Abstract:

Considers post-conflict land rights in a wide variety of countries and in varied human and geographical settings. This title highlights problems and successes, describing the primary features important to understanding the complex issues involved in land rights following armed conflict (WorldCat).

Annotation:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part 1: Peace negotiations

Part 2: Response to displacement and dispossession

Part 3: Land management

Part 4: Laws and policies

Part 5: Lessons learned

Topics: Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rights, Land Rights

Year: 2013

Citation:

Tsikata, Dzodzi, and Pamela Golah. 2010. Land Tenure, Gender and Globalization: Research and Analysis from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre.

Authors: Dzodzi Tsikata, Pamela Golah

Abstract:

Drawing from field research in Cameroon, Ghana, Viet Nam, and the Amazon forests of Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, this book explores the relationship between gender and land, revealing the workings of global capital and of people's responses to it. A central theme is the people's resistance to global forces, frequently through an insistence on the uniqueness of their livelihoods." "For instance, in the Amazon, the focus is on the social movements that have emerged in the context of struggles over land rights concerning the extraction of Brazil nuts and babatu kernels in an increasingly globalised market. In Viet Nam, the process of 'de-collectivising' rights to land is examined with a view to understanding ho* gender and other social differences are reworked in a market economy." "The book addresses a gap in the literature on land tenure and gender in developing countries. It raises new questions about the process of globalisation, particularly about who the actors are (local people, the state, NGOs, multinational companies) and the shifting relations amongst them. The book also challenges the very concepts of gender, land and globalisation. (Abstract from WorldCat)

Annotation:

Topics: Extractive Industries, Gender, Land Tenure, Globalization, Land Grabbing, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights Regions: Africa, Central Africa, West Africa, Americas, South America, Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, Ghana, Peru, Vietnam

Year: 2010

Citation:

Jacobs, Susie. 2013. Gender and Agrarian Reforms. New York: Routledge International Studies of Women and Place.

Author: Susie Jacobs

Abstract:

The redistribution of land has profound implications for women and for gender relations; however, gender issues have been marginalised from theoretical and policy discussions of agrarian reform. This book presents an overview of gender and agrarian reform experiences globally. It also includes case studies from Latin America, Asia, and Africa (WorldCat).

Annotation:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Theoretical perspectives

Chapter 2: Debates over agrarian reform

Chapter 3: Concepts for a gendered analysis of agrarian reform

Chapter 4: The gendered effects of household models of land reform

Chapter 5: Collectives and decollectivisations

Chapter 6: Gender and agricultural collectives : Soviet-type economies

Chapter 7: China : from collectivisation to the household responsibility system

Chapter 8: Viet Nam : egalitarian land reform

Chapter 9: Household models of reform and alternatives

Chapter 10: Mobilisation and marginalisation : Latin American examples

Chapter 11: Land reforms, customary law, and land titling in sub-Saharan Africa.

Topics: Agriculture, Gender, Women, Men, Gender Roles, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Americas, Central America, South America, Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe Countries: China, Vietnam

Year: 2013