The 1972 Aboriginal Embassy was one of the most significant indigenous political demonstrations of the twentieth century. What began as a simple response to a Prime Ministerial statement on Australia Day 1972, evolved into a six-month political stand-off between radical Aboriginal activists and a conservative Australian government. The dramatic scenes in July 1972 when police forcibly removed the Embassy from the lawns of the Australian Houses of Parliament were transmitted around the world. The demonstration increased international awareness of the struggle for justice by Aboriginal people, brought an end to the national government policy of assimilation and put Aboriginal issues firmly onto the national political agenda. The Embassy remains today and on Australia Day 2012 was again the focal point for national and international attention, demonstrating the intensity that the Embassy can still provoke after forty years of just sitting there. If, as some suggest, the Embassy can only ever be removed by Aboriginal people achieving their goals of Land Rights, Self-Determination and economic independence then it is likely to remain for some time yet.

This book explores the context of this moment that captured the world s attention by using, predominantly, the voices of the people who were there. More than a simple oral history, some of the key players represented here bring with them the imprimatur of the education they were to gain in the era after the Tent Embassy. This is an act of radicalisation. The Aboriginal participants in subversive political action have now broken through the barriers of access to academia and write as both eye-witnesses and also as trained historians, lawyers, film-makers. It is another act of subversion, a continuing taunt to the entrenched institutions of the dominant culture, part of a continuum of political thought and action. (Larissa Behrendt, Professor of Law, Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, University of Technology Sydney)

Access to land and property is vital to people's livelihoods in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas in Africa. People exert tremendous energy and imagination to have land claims recognized as rights with a variety of political, administrative, and legal institutions. This book is dedicated to a detailed analysis of how public authority and the state are formed through debates and struggles over property in the Upper East Region of Ghana. While scarcity may indeed promote exclusivity, the evidence from this book shows that when there are many institutions competing for the right to authorize claims to land, the result of an effort to unify and clarify the law is to intensify competition among them and weaken their legitimacy. The book particularly explores how state divestiture of land in 1979 encouraged competition between customary authorities and how the institution of the earthpriest was revived. Such processes are key to understanding property and authority in Africa.

This book provides a thorough analysis of the evolution of land property rights and transfer mechanism during the transition of the Chinese society from being a traditional self-sustaining agricultural society to a modern commercialized agricultural society. It provides empirical proof for complicated property rights theories and a solution and path for land capitalization. It discloses that in practice, land ownership may not be the essence and knot of the problem, and that the implementation of land property rights really matters.The book also provides a series of pragmatic solutions and measures to improve the current land law system and land policy in China. It stresses the importance of a pragmatic research methodology that is based on arguments on real life research and evidence, which may help promote a more grounded research atmosphere in the Chinese academia.

Comparative Perspectives on Communal Lands and Individual Ownership: Sustainable Futures addresses property and land title as central mechanisms governing access to communally-held land and resources. The collection assesses the effectiveness of property law and tenure models developed around concepts of individual ownership, for achieving long-term environmental and economic sustainability for indigenous peoples and local communities. It explores the momentum for change in the international realm, and then develops a comparative focus across Australia, North America, Africa, Peru, New Zealand and the Pacific region, examining the historical and current impacts of individuation of title on the customary law and practice of indigenous peoples and local communities. Themes of property, privatisation and sustainable communities are developed in theoretical analyses and case studies from these jurisdictions. The case studies throw into sharp relief how questions of land law and resources management should not be separated from wider issues about the long-term viability of communities. Comparative analysis allows consideration of how western models of land tenure and land title might better accommodate the exercise of traditional practices of indigenous peoples and local communities, while still promoting autonomy, choice and economic development. This volume will be of interest to scholars and professionals working in the fields of property law, land reform, policy and planning, indigenous law and customary law, environmental sustainability, development and resource management.

'This book debunks in spectacular fashion some of the most treasured, over-inflated claims of the benefits of native title.' Professor Mick Dodson, ANU Centre for Indigenous Studies 'David Ritter's fascinating account of the evolution of the native title system is elegant and incisive, scholarly and sceptical; above all, unfailingly intelligent.' Professor Robert Manne, La Trobe University 'An unsentimental, richly informed account of a fascinating period in the history of Australia's relationships with its indigenous people.' From the Foreword by Chief Justice Robert French After the historic Mabo judgement in 1992, Aboriginal communities had high hopes of obtaining land rights around Australia. What followed is a dramatic story of hard-fought contests over land, resources, money and power, yielding many frustrations and mixed outcomes. Based on extensive research, enriched by intimate experience as a lawyer and negotiator, David Ritter offers both an insider's perspective and a cool-headed and broad-ranging account of the native title system. In lucid prose Ritter examines the contributions of the players that contested and adjudicated native title: Aboriginal leaders and their communities, multinational resource companies, pastoralists, courts and tribunals, politicians and bureaucrats. His account lays bare the conflicts, compromises and conceits beneath the surface of the native title process.

Land reforms are laws that are intended, and likely, to cut poverty by raising the poor's share of land rights. That raises questions about property rights as old as moral philosophy, and issues of efficiency and fairness that dominate policy from Bolivia to Nepal. Classic reforms directly transfer land from rich to poor. However, much else has been marketed as land reform: the restriction of tenancy, but also its de-restriction; collectivisation, but also de-collectivisation; land consolidation, but also land division. In 1955-2000, genuine land reform affected over a billion people, and almost as many hectares. Is land reform still alive, for example in Bolivia, South Africa and Nepal? Or is it dead and, if so, is this because it has succeeded, or because it has failed? There has been massive research on land reform and this book builds on some surprising findings. * Small farms' share in land is rising in most of Asia and Africa. * This is not driven (as widely claimed) by growth in rural population or farm productivity, but by the relative efficiency of small farms, and in some cases by land reform. * Whether land reform helps the poor depends not only on land transfers, but at least as much on its effects through employment, non-farm activity, GDP growth and distribution, as well as the village status and power of the poor. * Avoidance, evasion and even distortion of land reform laws sometimes advance their main aims. * Liberalisation and its accompaniments (such as supermarkets) can be powerful friends or fatal foes of small farms and land reform. This book will be of great interest to students, researchers and consultants working on agriculture, farm organisation, rural development and poverty reduction, with special emphasis on developing countries.

The essential moments of the Civil Rights Movement are set in historical context by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the magisterial America in the King Years trilogy--Parting the Waters; Pillar of Fire; and At Canaan's Edge.Taylor Branch, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning America in the King Years trilogy, presents selections from his monumental work that recount the essential moments of the Civil Rights Movement. A masterpiece of storytelling on race and democracy, violence and nonviolence, The King Years delivers riveting tales of everyday heroes whose stories inspire us still. Here is the full sweep of an era that transformed America and continues to offer crucial lessons for today's world. This vital primer amply fulfills Branch's dedication: "For students of freedom and teachers of history."

In the context of increasing privatization and land reform these case studies reveal how reforms impact on women's rights to land and how these rights are contested or upheld. This volume focuses on the impact on women's land rights from the contemporary drive towards the formulation and implementation of land tenure reforms which aim primarily at the private registration of land. It is solidly groundedin the findings from seven case studies, all based on in-depth qualitative research, from various regions of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. The detailed, local level research in this volume not only challenges the status quo, but demonstrates that another world is possible and documents the many ways women in Eastern Africa are finding to ensure their rights to land. BIRGIT ENGLERT is Assistant Professor in the Department of African Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria; ELIZABETH DALEY is an independent land consultant. Uganda: Fountain Publishers(PB); Kenya: EAEP(PB); Tanzania: E&D Vision Publishing(PB)

Water is not only a source of life and culture. It is also a source of power, conflicting interests and identity battles. Rights to materially access, culturally organize and politically control water resources are poorly understood by mainstream scientific approaches and hardly addressed by current normative frameworks. These issues become even more challenging when law and policy-makers and dominant power groups try to grasp, contain and handle them in multicultural societies. The struggles over the uses, meanings and appropriation of water are especially well-illustrated in Andean communities and local water systems of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia, as well as in Native American communities in south-western USA.

The problem is that throughout history, these nation-states have attempted to 'civilize' and bring into the mainstream the different cultures and peoples within their borders instead of understanding 'context' and harnessing the strengths and potentials of diversity. This book examines the multi-scale struggles for cultural justice and socio-economic re-distribution that arise as Latin American communities and user federations seek access to water resources and decision-making power regarding their control and management. It is set in the dynamic context of unequal, globalizing power relations, politics of scale and identity, environmental encroachment and the increasing presence of extractive industries that are creating additional pressures on local livelihoods.

While much of the focus of the book is on the Andean Region, a number of comparative chapters are also included. These address issues such as water rights and defence strategies in neighbouring countries and those of Native American people in the southern USA, as well as state reform and multi-culturalism across Latin and Native America and the use of international standards in struggles for indigenous water rights. This book shows that, against all odds, people are actively contesting neoliberal globalization and water power plays. In doing so, they construct new, hybrid water rights systems, livelihoods, cultures and hydro-political networks, and dynamically challenge the mainstream powers and politics.

Issues such as the patentability of scientific ideas, the market for organs and open source software are hotly debated and yet poorly understood. In particular, there is a great need for sound economic theorizing on such issues.

There is also a need for a clear and concise exposition of the state-of-the-art of the economics of property rights. This book fulfils these various needs.

In a country built on the institution of private property, property-owner rights have been under attack. By arguing that private property is a fundamental liberty whose protection deserves the highest priority, Ellen Frankel Paul challenges one of the dominant trends of the past half century: the erosion of property rights via zoning and land use restrictions, carried on by government exercising its "police power" or promoting "the public interest."

Paul begins by examining the arguments of environmentalists in support of land-use legislation, and explores a few particularly troubling examples of the exercise of eminent domain and police powers. She traces the philosophical arguments for the two powers as well as their tortuous judicial history, the meaning of property rights and investigates how previous thinkers have defended these rights is detailed, and Paul suggests a more adequate defense for them. In the concluding portion of the book, the very legitimacy of eminent domain is questioned and the author offers recommendations for its reform.

This analysis is wide in scope and makes creative use of historical, legal, economic, and philosophic methodologies. It not only gives an account of the present power regulations on land, but also provides an exhaustive history of the development of the law in these two areas and of the philosophical ideas of the thinkers who helped shape this process. This book is distinctive because it places a theory of the just acquisition of property at the heart of the answer to the question of the extent to which governments can rightfully exercise the powers of eminent domain and police.

"Amazingly, in a country built on the institution of private property, the right to property in land has been under increasing assault, and has seldom been defended. Paul's book--by arguing that private property is a fundamental liberty whose protection deserves the highest priority--is a major step toward filling the void."--Robert Hessen, Stanford University

"Ellen Frankel Paul" is Deputy Director of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, and is professor of political science and philosophy at Bowling Green State University. She is also an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

Issues such as the patentability of scientific ideas, the market for organs and open source software are hotly debated and yet poorly understood. In particular, there is a great need for sound economic theorizing on such issues.

There is also a need for a clear and concise exposition of the state-of-the-art of the economics of property rights. This book fulfils these various needs.

This collection of cutting-edge articles focuses on recent shifts in thinking about land rights, particularly as they relate to women. Leading feminist scholars in the field provide searching treatment of the long-neglected subject of gender and access to land.

The articles are introduced and contextualized by Shahra Razavi. She weaves together the findings and arguments of contributions which look at the implications of the current neoliberal policy agenda for a number of specific regions. Topics covered range from policy discussions about women's land rights in sub-Saharan Africa to land tenure reforms and women's interests in Tanzania; and from new prospects with respect to gender and land rights in India, to agrarian reform to rural social movements and women's land rights in Brazil.

This is a timely collection, in which careful empirical analysis is presented with analytical power and clarity. The papers are provocative, refreshingly original and richly informative.

How is the legal conception of 'property' working to eradicate the global urban commons? Contemporary capitalism has advanced this process by producing rampant gentrification, socio-spatial stratification, and racial inequality. In Unsettling the City, Nicholas Blomley shows how the concept of 'property' helps to generate and underwrite these pervasive urban processes. But they are not uncontested. Showing how conflicting concepts of property are implicated in a host of social struggles in the contemporary city, he begins his study with the Pacific Northwest. From this base, Blomley moves to Pacific Rim cities in general, looking at gentrification, urban land, and postcolonialism in the Western US, Australia, and Western Canada - areas where one can see the stark collision between Western, neoliberal notions of property and the more egalitarian, communal view espoused by recently displaced (yet still present) native cultures.

Cauca's Indigenous Movement in Southwestern Colombia: Land, Violence, and Ethnic Identity provides a vivid account of how the indigenous communities of Cauca in southwestern Colombia engaged with the Colombian central state. Troyan begins with the question of how 3.4 percent of the Colombian population obtained legal rights to close to a quarter of the national territory. Her in-depth study of the correspondence between the central state and indigenous communities of Cauca reveals that the nation state played a key role in the legitimization of land claims based on ethnic identity. Starting with the indigenous movement led by Manuel Quintin Lame in 1914, this book shows how, in contrast to the local authorities of Cauca, the central state adopted a more sympathetic albeit contradictory approach to indigenous communities' grievances throughout the twentieth century. Land, Violence, and Cauca's Indigenous Movement in Southwestern Colombia presents an examination of state initiatives in the 1930s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s toward indigenous communities in Cauca, which sheds light on the political and social construction of Colombian indigenous identity. Troyan also reveals how violence and the representation of violence shaped the conversations between the central state and indigenous communities of Cauca; the central state's inability to exert a monopoly on violence, Troyan argues, places indigenous communities and their leaders in jeopardy despite the discursive legitimization of land claims based on ethnic identity.

Recent debates surrounding human security have focused on the satisfaction of human needs as the vital goal for global development. Peter Wilkin highlights the limitations of this view and argues that unless we incorporate an account of human autonomy into human security then the concept is flawed. He reveals how human security is a concern with social relations that connect people in local, national and global networks of power, structured through capitalism and hierarchical inter-state systems. Autonomy, as an aspect of human security, depends upon the ability of citizens to gain information about the processes that shape their lives. In this respect autonomy and communication are inherently linked and are prerequisites for the establishment of meaningful democratic systems. To what extent do developments in global communication enhance or undermine autonomy? As the world's media companies continue to merge, we are moving towards an ever more commercially driven system of global information. Wilkin argues that private ownership provides an increasingly powerful obstacle to human autonomy, and that the neo-liberal institutional and policy framework - now a global tendency - raises major problems for the attainment of human security. At the same time it has provided the ideological justification for the extension of private power into ever wider areas of public life. Changes in global communication reflect wider tendencies to enhance the power of global elites at the expense of working people and the author illustrates how and why these changes have taken place and the forms of opposition that have arisen in response to them.

This book is the first in-depth look at the past 120 years of struggle over the Oglala Lakota land base on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. An unholy alliance between the federal government and regional economic interests has led to progressive disenfranchisement of the majority of the Oglala people, and to the development of an ethnically distinct class of Oglala who control the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation land base. The small group of so-called "mixed-blood" Oglala has come to control the grazing land on the reservation, and to exercise a disproportionate control of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Government. Conflicts growing out of that situation are central to understanding of the reservation situation.

Contents:
Part 1: Society, Culture and Rural Land
1. Citizenship and the Countryside
2. Culture, Citizenship and Rural Policy
3. Imagining the Rural
4. Book Structure: Towards Citizenship of the Rural
Part 2: Unpacking Citizenship
1. Introduction: Considering Citizenship
2. Citizenship: Status, Identity and Activity
3. Citizenship Theory and Legitimation
4. Globalization and the Fragmentation of Citizenship
5. (Re)spatialising Citizenship
6. The Land and the Citizen: Citizenship and Private Property Rights
7. Conclusion: Towards Fluid, Post-national Citizenship?
Part 3: UK Politics and the Citizenship Debate
1. Introduction
2. Society, State and Citizenship
3. Political Projects and Citizenship Rhetoric
4. Citizenship and Globalization
5. Conclusions: Alternative Agendas and Citizenship
Part 4: On Being Modern: Consolidating Citizenship in the Countryside
1. Ordering the Countryside, Ordering Citizens
2. The Agricultural 'Revolution' and the Redistribution of Rights
3. Land, Conflict and Citizenship Definition
Part 5: Enacting and Contesting Rights through History
1. Political Action and Citizenship
2. Citizenship, Destabilization and Dissent
3. Citizenship as Manipulating Space and Time
4. Diggers and Invaders
5. Conclusion
Part 6: Political Expediency, Localness and Active Citizenship
1. Introduction
2. Modern State, Postmodern Citizenship?
3. Citizenship and Activity: (Re)mapping and Weaving
4. 'Active' Citizenship: Status, Identity and Activity Revisited
5. Active Citizenship and the State
Part 7: Citizenship and the Countryside as Consumer Space
1. Introduction
2. Postmodern Politics, Media-tion and Communities of Interest
3. Citizenship, Consumers and Space/Place
4. Conclusion: Mobile Politics, Consumerism and the Rural
Part 8: Citizenship, Contingency and the Countryside
1. Multiple, Contingent and Inclusionary Citizenships?
2. Projects and Practices of Citizenship

The author explores how tribal governments have worked through the constraints of their eroded territory and sovereignty to provide effective leadership and governance.

This treatment of the modern predicament of the Rabha of Kocha people deals with their survival in the forest and their quest for identity. Rabhas are one of India's indigenous people, traditionally practising shifting cultivation in the jungle tracts where the Himalayan mountains meet the plains of Bengal. When the area came under British rule ans was converted into tea gardens and reserved forests, Rabhas were forced to become laboureres under the Forest Department. Today, large-scale illegal deforestation and the global interest in wildlife conservation once again jeopardise the survival of the Rabhas in the forest. The Buxa Tiger Reserve has recently become included in a World Bank programme for ecodevelopment. This description of the development of the Rabha peole covers their ways of coping with the colonial regime of scientific forestry and the depletion of the forest as well as with the present day concerns for wilderness and wildlife restoration and preservation. One of the central points of the book relates to the question of identity. The author discusses the Rabha's ongoing conversion to Christianity and their ethmic mobilisation. The main theoretical issue concerns the

Development organizations are searching for concepts and methods that will enable impacts of development co-operation to be recorded and scientifically tenable, transparent and practicable conclusions to be drawn. They expect the cost of evaluations to be proportional to the project budget. While a standardized set of tools is available for the economic and technical evaluation of projects, methods of covering the social dimension - which are of prime importance for impact analysis - have yet to reach maturity.

Development organizations are searching for concepts and methods that will enable impacts of development co-operation to be recorded and scientifically tenable, transparent and practicable conclusions to be drawn. They expect the cost of evaluations to be proportional to the project budget. While a standardized set of tools is available for the economic and technical evaluation of projects, methods of covering the social dimension - which are of prime importance for impact analysis - have yet to reach maturity.

The crisis of environmental degradation has createcharemd an immense volume of literature which focuses on controlling environmental problems. Economic Rights and Environmental Wrongs goes one step further to extend and complement the current debates. Using property rights the book examines the causes and possible solutions to environmental and resource degradation. Written in a non-technical, reader-friendly style the book also offers: numerous examples and case studies an up-to-date list of world wide web sites relevant to the subject a detailed glossary of environmental and economic terms a guide to the literature at the end of every chapter Economic Rights and Environmental Wrongs is an essential supplementary text for undergraduates and postgraduates studying environmental and natural resource management, environmental studies, ecology, environmental science, environmental economics, agricultural economics and geography.

This study presents the story of successes and failures of the treatment of security matters pertaining to territorial and boundary affairs in the maritime areas of the Persian Gulf, and at the same time provides an example of the impact of territoriality on world-wide maritime security.