Decentering emergent truths on tenure security: Archaeology of a global knowledge regime

ABSTRACT

Land governance has taken center stage in global development discourse and practice. ‘Respect for land rights’, ‘women’s land rights’ and ‘tenure security’ have emerged as central concepts, with tenure formalization and community consultation emerging as key instruments through which these aims are advanced. A long history of scholarship questioning the benefits of titling and consultation and highlighting attendant risks seems to have been buried under the enthusiasm of this new global consensus. This paper offers one explanation for this paradox, exploring the workings of a global knowledge regime in which socially progressive language is deployed to advance instrumentalities which are as likely to pry open as to safeguard communal land in the face of outside interests.

KEYWORDS:

• Land governance
• land rights
• community consultation
• land titling
• politics of knowledge

Acknowledgements

This collaboration was made possible through the generous financial support provided by the Franklin International Scholars Program at the University of Georgia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support provided by the Franklin Visiting Scholars program at the University of Georgia.

Notes on contributors

Laura A. German

Laura German is an anthropologist with over 25 years of experience on tropical land use and land and environmental governance in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Her recent work focuses on the discourses and evidence associated with land and investment governance in the global South, with a focus on Africa. This has included a comparative analyses of legislation and practice related to large-scale land acquisitions; global comparative work on the local social and environmental impacts of biofuels; an evaluation of multi-level institutional architectures governing land-based investments; an analysis of land titling in pastoralist communities in Kenya; country and regional analyses of China’s growing influence in the agricultural, forestry and mining sectors in southern Africa; and systematic reviews of biofuels sustainability and the implications of the global land rush for agricultural communities. Before taking a position as Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Georgia (2012-present), she worked as Senior Scientist with the Center for International Forestry Research (2007–2011) and Scientist with the World Agroforestry Center/African Highlands Initiative (2002–2007). She has published three edited volumes: Governing Africa’s Forests in a Globalized World (Earthscan, 2009), Beyond the Biophysical: Knowledge, Culture and Power in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (Springer, 2010) and Integrated Natural Resource Management in the Highlands of Eastern Africa: From Concept to Practice (Earthscan, 2011).

Carla Braga

Carla Braga is a Mozambican anthropologist with a PhD from SUNY-State University of New York at Buffalo. She is Associate Dean for Research and Extension at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique, where she teaches research methods, ethnography and medical anthropology. Her interests cover land tenure and livelihoods, health and ecology, biomedical culture and practice in non-western settings, as well as post-colonial theory and knowledge production. Connecting all of these topics is a keen interest on gender, which is a theme running through various projects she has carried out in Latin America and Southern Africa.