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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Human rights > Land rights
Contesting one’s place remains central to confronting the lingering impact of colonisation and apartheid, emerging as it does out of the intermingling of our environments, histories, languages and experiences. In this volume, architects, anthropologists, artists, urban planners, activists and historians examine the ways in which people are rethinking, repurposing and reusing colonial and apartheid architecture and infrastructure. They seek to engage with ways in which history, art and architecture practices contest and subvert these protracted conditions in terms of social justice, development, conservation, heritage, land reclamation and urban renewal. The focus is on colonial environments in different parts of South Africa and Africa to understand the history of disputed places and responses of remembrance, communal consideration, revival and conflict. In recent years, public awareness of the physical and environmental reminders of this past has been sharpened by sporadic campaigns and ongoing disputes around land, gentrification, repatriation and heritage. Globally, there has been a wave of public outcry and contestation about the place of racist names and statues in public spaces, litigation over abandoned and toxic sites, with calls for removal and restitution as an integral part of decolonisation. And there has been recognition of the lived experiences, knowledge and activities through which people and communities build their heritage. In this context, questions about the place of colonial and apartheid planning and architecture and their past acquire salience and urgency in the present.
The issue of land rights is an ongoing and complex topic of debate for South Africans. Rights to Land comes at a time when land redistribution by government is underway. This book seeks to understand the issues around land rights and distribution of land in South Africa and proposes that new policies and processes should be developed and adopted. It further provides an analysis of what went so wrong, and warns that a new phase of restitution may ignite conflicting ethnic claims and facilitate elite capture of land and rural resources. While there are no quick fixes, the first phase of restitution should be completed and the policy then curtailed. The book argues that land ownership and administration is important to rural democracy and that this should not be placed under the control of traditionalist intermediaries. Land restitution, initiated in 1994, was an important response to the injustices of the apartheid era. But it was intended as a limited and short-term process – initially to be completed in five years. It may continue for decades, creating uncertainty and undermining investment into agriculture.
In response to the recent surge in extractive natural resource investments in Africa, this insightful book explores how relations between investors, ruling elites, and local populations develop when large-scale investments in gas, minerals, and agriculture expand. Advancing a multi-level approach that encompasses rigorous theoretical analysis, fieldwork, and literature review, expert contributors examine the implementation of natural resource investments and the extent to which they respect procedural rights of local populations. Chapters draw together understudied bodies of literature on land-grabbing debates, the resource curse controversy and corporate social responsibility (CSR), demonstrating how the chances of large-scale investments in natural resources are at their greatest when characterised by 'reciprocal exchange deals' between investors and local populations, 'compatible interests' between ruling elites and investors, and 'mutual recognition' between local populations and ruling elites. Through a careful examination of case studies in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda, the book ultimately highlights the complexity of the political economy of natural resource investments. Providing valuable theoretical and empirical insights, this book will be an invigorating read for scholars and students of political economy, political geography, sustainability, CSR, and business studies. Its valuable insights on how natural resource investments might accelerate economic growth and consolidate links between local and global economies will also be of interest to development practitioners and investors.
'This is Doro and he is beautiful.' So begins the extraordinary story of Doro Goumaneh, who faced an unimaginable series of adversities on his journey from persecution in The Gambia to refuge in France. Doro was once a relatively prosperous fisherman, but in 2014, when the country's fishing rights were stolen and secret police began arresting Gambian fishermen, Doro left home, fleeing for his life. From Senegal to Libya to Algeria and back to Libya, Doro fell victim to the horrific cycle of abuse targeted at refugees. He endured shipwreck, torture and being left for dead in a mass grave. Miraculously, he survived. In 2019, during one of his many attempts to reach Europe, Doro was rescued by the boat Sea-Watch 3 in the Mediterranean, where he met volunteer Brendan Woodhouse. While waiting out a two-week standoff - floating off the coast of Sicily, as political leaders accused Sea-Watch, a German organisation that helps migrants, of facilitating illegal entry to Europe - a great friendship formed. Told through both Doro's and Brendan's perspectives, Doro touches on questions of policy and politics, brutality and bravery, survival and belonging - issues that confront refugees everywhere. But ultimately it is one man's incredible story - that of Doro: refugee, hero, champion, survivor and friend.
This book chronicles, through desktop and interview research methodology, the experiences of the Mabula area community in the full spectrum of the dispossession of their land by Whites during the erstwhile apartheid government era in the 1960s, and subsequent successful reclaim under the post-1994 democratic government. Situated within the Waterberg District in the Limpopo Province (then Transvaal), the Mabula community was uprooted from the farms Cyferfontein 434 KR, Droogersloot 476 KR, Olievenfontein 475 KR and Rietspruit 527 KQ, in the Bela-Bela area, and dumped on barren areas in the Moretele district in the former Bophutatswana Homeland. Meanwhile, the land they left behind was turned into agricultural haven for White farmers and the well known money-spinning wild life tourism destinations, such as Bonwa Phala and Mabalingwe Game Parks. On 28 April 1998, the late Mr. Matsaremane Andries Mabuela officially lodged a land claim on these farms with The Commission of Restitution of Land Rights. After Mr. Mabuela’s death, the process was carried forward through the formation of the Bela-Bela Community Property Association (BBCPA), led by Mr. Lefa Barrington Mabuela, his son, as chairperson. The most remarkable aspect of the BBCPA’s struggle for the retention of their land was the rational and reconciliatory manner in which it was conducted; such that it could serve as a beacon or model for other successful land claims.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDIE BOOK AWARD FOR NON-FICTION 2022 'Brilliant, passionate and political . . . The Book of Trespass will make you see landscapes differently' Robert Macfarlane 'A remarkable and truly radical work, loaded with resonant truths' George Monbiot The vast majority of our country is entirely unknown to us because we are banned from setting foot on it. By law of trespass, we are excluded from 92 per cent of the land and 97 per cent of its waterways, blocked by walls whose legitimacy is rarely questioned. But behind them lies a story of enclosure, exploitation and dispossession of public rights whose effects last to this day. The Book of Trespass takes us on a journey over the walls of England, into the thousands of square miles of rivers, woodland, lakes and meadows that are blocked from public access. By trespassing the land of the media magnates, Lords, politicians and private corporations that own England, Nick Hayes argues that the root of social inequality is the uneven distribution of land. Weaving together the stories of poachers, vagabonds, gypsies, witches, hippies, ravers, ramblers, migrants and protestors, and charting acts of civil disobedience that challenge orthodox power at its heart, The Book of Trespass will transform the way you see the land. --------------- A GUARDIAN, i AND SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR
This book presents current research in the political ecology of indigenous revival and its role in nature conservation in critical areas in the Americas. An important contribution to evolving studies on conservation of sacred natural sites (SNS), the book elucidates the complexity of development scenarios within cultural landscapes related to the appropriation of religion, environmental change in indigenous territories, and new conservation management approaches. Indigeneity and the Sacred explores how these struggles for land, rights, and political power are embedded within physical landscapes, and how indigenous identity is reconstituted as globalizing forces simultaneously threaten and promote the notion of indigeneity.
It is the largest landholder in America, overseeing nearly an eighth of the country: 258 million acres located almost exclusively west of the Mississippi River, with even twice as much below the surface. Its domain embraces wildlife and wilderness, timber, range, and minerals, and for over 60 years, the Bureau of Land Management has been an agency in search of a mission. This is the first comprehensive, analytical history of the BLM and its struggle to find direction. James Skillen traces the bureau's course over three periods-its formation in 1946 and early focus on livestock and mines, its 1970s role as mediator between commerce and conservation, and its experience of political gridlock since 1981 when it faced a powerful anti-environmental backlash. Focusing on events that have shaped the BLM's overall mission, organization, and culture, he takes up issues ranging from the National Environmental Policy Act to the Sagebrush Rebellion in order to paint a broad picture of the agency's changing role in the American West. Focusing on the vast array of lands and resources that the BLM manages, he explores the complex and at times contradictory ways that Americans have valued nature. Skillen shows that, although there have been fleeting moments of consensus over the purpose of national forests and parks, there has never been any such consensus over the federal purpose of the public lands overseen by the BLM. Highlighting the perennial ambiguities shadowing the BLM's domain and mission, Skillen exposes the confusion sown by conflicting congressional statutes, conflicting political agendas, and the perennial absence of public support. He also shows that, while there is room for improvement in federal land management, the criteria by which that improvement is measured change significantly over time. In the face of such ambiguity--political, social, and economic--Skillen argues that the agency's history of limited political power and uncertain mission has, ironically, better prepared it to cope with the more chaotic climate of federal land management in the twenty-first century. Indeed, operating in an increasingly crowded physical and political landscape, it seems clear that the BLM's mission will continue to be marked by ambiguity. For historians, students, public administrators, or anyone who cares about American lands, Skillen offers a cautionary tale for those still searching for a final solution to federal land and resource conflicts.
A leading group of scholars examine the circumstances under which central states might change their shape in responding to ethnic upheavals and regionalist demands. A systematic approach is applied to a country-by-country approach examining in turn most of the key areas of state boundary disputes in the contemporary world.
A study of gult from the 13th century to 1910 revealing much about the history of highland Christian Ethiopia. Gult, a system of land tenure encompassing both taxation and tribute, is unique to highland Ethiopia. It was through this that Ethiopian states and their rulers affected the lives of ordinary people. US, Canada & rest of world (exc. UK, Commonwealth & Europe) : University of Illinois Press Ethiopia: Addis Ababa University Press
This book explains how one man swindled his Andean village twice. The first time he extorted everyone's wealth and disappeared, leaving the village in shambles. The village slowly recovered through the unlikely means of converting to Evangelical religions, and therein reestablished trust and the ability to work together. The new religion also kept villagers from exacting violent revenge when this man returned six years later. While hated and mistrusted, this same man again succeeded in cheating the villagers. Only this time it was for their lands, the core resource on which they depended for their existence. This is not a story about hapless isolation or cruel individuals. Rather, this is a story about racism, about the normal operation of society that continuously results in indigenous peoples' impoverishment and dependency. This book explains how the institutions created for the purpose of exploiting Indians during colonialism have been continuously revitalized over the centuries despite innovative indigenous resistance and epochal changes, such as the end of the colonial era itself. The ethnographic case of the Andean village first shows how this institutional set up works through-rather than despite-the inflow of development monies. It then details how the turn to advanced capitalism-neoliberalism-intensifies this racialized system, thereby enabling the seizure of native lands.
During the Standing Rock Sioux protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, an activist observed, "Forced removal isn't just in the history books." Sabine N. Meyer concurs, noting the prominence of Indian Removal, the nineteenth-century policy of expelling Native peoples from their land, in Native American aesthetic and political praxis across the centuries. Removal has functioned both as a specific set of historical events and a synecdoche for settler colonial dispossession of Indigenous communities across hemispheres and generations. It has generated a plethora of Native American writings that negotiate forms of belonging-the identities of Native collectives, their proprietary relationships, and their most intimate relations among one another. By analyzing these writings in connection with domestic settler colonial, international, and tribal law, Meyer reveals their coherence as a distinct genre of Native literature that has played a significant role in negotiating Indigenous identity. Critically engaging with Native Removal writings across the centuries, Meyer's work shows how these texts need to be viewed as articulations of Native identity that respond to immediate political concerns and that take up the question of how Native peoples can define and assert their own social, cultural, and legal-political forms of living, being, and belonging within the settler colonial order. Placing novels in conversation with nonfiction writings, Native Removal Writing ranges from texts produced in response to the legal and political struggle over Cherokee Removal in the late 1820s and 1830s, to works written by African-Native writers dealing with the freedmen disenrollment crisis, to contemporary speculative fiction that links the appropriation of Native intangible property (culture) with the earlier dispossession of their real property (land). In close, contextualized readings of John Rollin Ridge, John Milton Oskison, Robert Conley, Diane Glancy, Sharon Ewell Foster, Zelda Lockhart, and Gerald Vizenor, as well as politicians and scholars such as John Ross, Elias Boudinot, and Rachel Caroline Eaton, Meyer identifies the links these writers create between historical past, narrative present, and political future. Native Removal Writing thus testifies to both the ongoing power of Native Removal writing and its significance as resistance.
'The countryside ought to be for everyone, and this beautiful, thoughtful companion can help us all start to forge paths into the forgotten corners of our green, pleasant and often inaccessible land' Catrina Davies, author of Homesick The Trespasser's Companion is a rallying cry for greater public access to nature and a gently seditious guide to how to get it: by trespassing. We are excluded from the majority of our land and waterways in England, but bestselling writer Nick Hayes shows how reclaiming our connection to nature would be better both for us, and for nature. By stepping over the fences that bar us from the countryside, by engaging more deeply with nature through craft, education, and citizen science, we can rediscover not only a land that has been hidden from us for too long, but also reignite our collective responsibility to protect it. Interwoven are testimonials from expert contributors - farmers and landworkers, activists and authors - each with deeply personal stories of what a connection to nature means for them. With exquisite woodcut illustrations throughout, this is both a love letter to our land and a call to action. 'The Trespasser's Companion is many things at once: a how-to guide; a spell book; a call to arms' Kerri Andrews, author of Wanderers
"Klein's excellent survey of these realities and dynamics will remain an important brief for decision-makers in the future."--"The Journal of Israeli History" "A book of considerable weight and an important contribution to
the growing genre of political studies in Jerusalem." Jerusalem, which means "city of peace," is one of the most bitterly contested territories on earth. Claimed by two peoples and sacred to three faiths, for the last three decades the city has been associated with violent struggle and civil unrest. As the peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis reach their conclusion, the final, and most difficult issue is the status of Jerusalem. How and to what extent will these two nations share this city? How will Christians, Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem and around the world redefine their relationship to Jerusalem when the dust settles on the final agreement? Will the Israelis and Palestinians even be able to reach an agreement at all? Menachem Klein, one of the leading experts on the history and politics of Jerusalem, cuts through the rhetoric on all sides to explain the actual policies of the Israelis and Palestinians toward the city. He describes the "facts on the ground" that make their competing claims so fraught with tension and difficult to reconcile. He shows how Palestinian national institutions have operated clandestinely since the Israelis occupied the eastern half of the city, and how the Israelis have tried to suppress them. Ultimately, he points the way toward a compromise solution but insists that the struggle for power and cultural recognition will likely continue to be apermanent feature of life in this complicated, multi-cultural city.
The politics of domination with which the United States oppresses and exploits the Native Nations, is a violation of the intentions of the framers of the Constitution, and the meaning of the text itself. The arguments of the advocates of the genocide of the 1830s and their appeasers have come to determine the law, policy, and conduct of the United States, while the arguments of the opponents of what came to be known as the Trail of Tears have largely been forgotten, at least among non-Native people. By recovering these arguments, and allowing readers to explore large questions of law, justice, genocide, and politics in a context closely tethered to empirical evidence and careful argument, this book should facilitate more widespread understanding of the Native Nations' rights to their treaty-guaranteed dominion over their own lands and perhaps help open communication between the American people and the peoples of the Native Nations; communication on which the emergence of what Martin Luther King, Jr. called "the beloved community" depends. Arguments over Genocide aims to reach a broad audience of college students, in courses on American History, Indigenous Studies, and the United States and the World, as well as in more specialized upper division courses on constitutional law, American/European imperialism, and resistance, independence, and decolonization movements. Individuals interested in the founding of the United States, in the Trail of Tears, and in 19th century American history should find the work compelling, as should legal practitioners in the field.
Protecting the Property Rights of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: Beyond Restitution pursues a rigorous examination of the various ways in which the protection of housing and property rights can contribute to durable solutions to displacement. The focus of most of the international community's recent protection efforts has been on returning displaced persons to their homes following armed conflict. However, this focus on return has come at the expense of considering other possible durable solutions, particularly in cases of protracted displacement. In this book, Anneke Smit chronicles the failure of the international community's attempts to promote widespread return through establishing housing and property restitution mechanisms. Drawing on a variety of displacement situations, and referring throughout to international human rights and refugee law, property law and theory, and sociological and anthropological literature on displacement and the meaning of home', she argues that a housing and property policy which supports integration in the communities where refugees and internally displaced persons find themselves after conflict is likely to represent a more effective and sustainable approach than a singular focus on return. Protecting the Property Rights of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons is based on extensive academic research, including fieldwork, as well as more than a decade of the author's practical experience working on displacement issues with government, international organisation and NGO actors. It will be of considerable interest to those with academic and policy interests in the rights of refugees and displaced persons.
This book constitutes volume one of a two volume examination of development community land issues in Southern Africa. In this volume, Ben Chigara undertakes a holistic inter-disciplinary evaluation of the legitimacy of colonial and emergent post-colonial rule property rights in affected States of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It particularly focuses on intensifying litigation in national courts, the SADC Tribunal, and more recently the Washington based International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) regarding counter claims to title to property. The book examines cultural, economic and political drivers at the core of SADC land issues, focusing on their significance and potential to contribute to the discovery of a new, sustainable land relations policy that guarantees social justice in the distribution of all the advantages and disadvantages relating to the allocation and use of land. Chigara shows that persistent systematic administrative failures by pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial authorities have made for a very complex challenge that requires Solomonic tools that neither the Courts alone, nor human rights centric morality alone could resolutely attend. The book recommends a sophisticated systematic new approach to SADC land issues, which is developed in volume two, Re-conceiving Property Rights in the New Millennium. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of Property and Conveyancing Law, Human Rights Law and Land Law.
Who has rights to forests and forest resources? In recent years governments in the South have transferred at least 200 million hectares of forests to communities living in and around them . This book assesses the experience of what appears to be a new international trend that has substantially increased the share of the world's forests under community administration. Based on research in over 30 communities in selected countries in Asia (India, Nepal, Philippines, Laos, Indonesia), Africa (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana) and Latin America (Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua), it examines the process and outcomes of granting new rights, assessing a variety of governance issues in implementation, access to forest products and markets and outcomes for people and forests . Forest tenure reforms have been highly varied, ranging from the titling of indigenous territories to the granting of small land areas for forest regeneration or the right to a share in timber revenues. While in many cases these rights have been significant, new statutory rights do not automatically result in rights in practice, and a variety of institutional weaknesses and policy distortions have limited the impacts of change. Through the comparison of selected cases, the chapters explore the nature of forest reform, the extent and meaning of rights transferred or recognized, and the role of authority and citizens' networks in forest governance. They also assess opportunities and obstacles associated with government regulations and markets for forest products and the effects across the cases on livelihoods, forest condition and equity.Published with CIFOR
The redistribution of land has profound implications for women and for gender relations; however, gender issues have been marginalised from both theoretical and policy discussions of agrarian reform. This book presents an overview of gender and agrarian reform experiences globally. Jacobs highlights case studies from Latin America, Asia, Africa and eastern Europe and also compares agrarian and land reforms organised along collective lines as well as along individual household lines. This volume will be of interest to scholars in Geography, Womena (TM)s Studies, and Economics.
What constitutes a resource, and how do people make claims on them? In the context of a burgeoning discourse of property, these are vital questions. Rationales of Ownership offers conceptual clarification in the context of material, intellectual and cultural resources in Papua New Guinea. The volume is a result of a major research project headed by Marilyn Strathern and Eric Hirsch, and brings together contributions from social anthropology and law. The approaches demonstrated, and conclusions reached, build upon recent understandings developed within Melanesian anthropology, but have far wider significance. The first publication sold out in Papua New Guinea due to the relevance of its approach and contents to lawyers and policy makers in that country. It is here made available to a wider readership, particularly those teaching courses on resource development, cultural and intellectual property, contemporary Pacific societies, environmental degradation, and property itself. ADVANCE PRAISE '...a unique contribution to the discipline's voice in contemporary global debates...this volume represents the best of the comparative, ethnographic tradition providing critical insight into difference and similarity on issues that entangle us all in various degrees of responsibility and care. It will be read by anthropologists, policy makers and all academic and non-academic students of what has come to be seen as the test area of the survival of cultural difference.' Marta Roahtynskyj, University of Guelph Lawrence Kalinoe is Professor and Executive Dean in the School of Law, University of Papua New Guinea. James Leach is Research Fellow, King's College and Associate Lecturer, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge.
The complex relationships between ethno-nationality, rights to land, and territorial sovereignty have long fed disputes over territorial control and landed rights between different nations, ethnicities, and religions. These disputes raise a number of interesting issues related to the nature of land regimes and to their economic and political implications. The studies drawn together in this key volume explore these and related issues for a broad variety of countries and times. They illuminate the diverse causes of ethno-national land disputes, and the different forms of adjustment and accommodation to the power differences between the contesting groups. This is done within a framework outlined by the editors in their analytical overview, which offers contours for comparative examinations of such disputes, past and present. Providing conceptual and factual analyses of comparative nature and wealth of empirical material (both historical and contemporary), this book will appeal to economic historians, economists, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists and all scholars interested in issues concerning ethno-nationality and land rights in historical perspective.
First published in 1969. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
An original, rigorously researched volume that questions long-accepted paradigms concerning land ownership and its use in Africa. Islam, Power, and Dependency in the Gambia River Basin draws on new sources to offer an original approach to the study of land in African history. Documenting the impact of Islamization, the development of peanut production, and the institution of colonial rule on people living along the middle and lower Gambia River, the book shows how these waves of changes sweeping the region after 1850 altered local political and social arrangements, with important implications for the ability of elites to control land. Author Assan Sarr argues for a nuanced understanding of land and its historic value in Africa. Moving beyond a recognition of the material value of land, Sarr'sanalysis highlights its cultural and social worth, pointing out the spiritual associations the land generated and the ways that certain people gained privileged access to those spiritual powers. By emphasizing that the land aroundthe Gambia River both inspired and gave form to a cosmology of ritual and belief, the book points to what might be considered an indigenous tradition of ecological preservation and protection. Assan Sarr is assistant professor of history at Ohio University.
Several studies have investigated the impetus and implications behind large-scale land acquisitions/deals at the global level; however, intranational factors within communities and societies have not received much attention from researchers. The Handbook of Research on In-Country Determinants and Implications of Foreign Land Acquisitions examines the economic, sociological, and environmental issues surrounding land transactions and the impact these deals may have on local households and communities. Focusing on international issues as well as domestic concerns, this publication is a useful reference for policymakers, academics, researchers, and advanced-level students in various disciplines.
In this book, Martin Bunton focuses on the way in which the
Palestine Mandate was part of a broader British imperial
administration - a fact often masked by Jewish immigration and land
purchase in Palestine. His meticulous research reveals clear links
to colonial practice in India, Sudan, and Cyprus amongst other
places. He argues that land officials' views on sound land
management were derived from their own experiences of rural
England, and that this was far more influential on the shaping of
land policies than the promise of a Jewish National Home. |
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