Health and Wealth: Health by Association? Social Capital, Social Theory, and the Political Economy of Public Health

The evolutionary theory of land rights can be considered the dominant framework of analysis used by mainstream economists to assess the land tenure situation in developing countries, and to make predictions about its evolution. A central tenet of this theoryis that under the joint impact of increasing population pressure and market integration, land rights spontaneously evolve towards rising individualization and that this evolutioneventually leads rightsholders to press for the creation of duly formalized private property rights — a demand to which the state will have an incentive to respond. This article looks critically at the relevance of the evolutionary theory of land rights as currently applied to Sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, the question of whether the establishmentof private property rights is an advisable structural reform in the present circumstancesis examined, in the light of evidence accumulated so far. It will be argued that most of the beneficial effects usually ascribed to such a reform are grossly over-estimated and that, given its high cost, it is generally advisable to look for more appropriate solutions that rely on existing informal mechanisms at community level.

The Evolutionary Theory of Land Rights as Applied to Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Critical Assessment

In 1945, Bronislaw Malinowski urged anthropology to abandon what he called its “one-column entries” on African societies and to study instead the “no-man's land of change,” to attend to the “aggressive and conquering” European communities as well as native ones, and to be aware that “European interests and intentions” were rarely unified but more often “at war” (1945:14–15). Four decades later, few of us have heeded his prompting or really examined his claim.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/178797.pdf

Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule

Much of the debate over the security implications of climate change revolves around whether changing weather patterns will lead to future conflict. This article addresses whether deviations from normal rainfall patterns affect the propensity for individuals and groups to engage in disruptive activities such as demonstrations, riots, strikes, communal conflict, and anti-government violence. In contrast to much of the environmental security literature, it uses a much broader definition of conflict that includes, but is not limited to, organized rebellion. Using a new database of over 6,000 instances of social conflict over 20 years - the Social Conflict in Africa Database (SCAD) - it examines the effect of deviations from normal rainfall patterns on various types of conflict. The results indicate that rainfall variability has a significant effect on both large-scale and smaller-scale instances of political conflict. Rain- fall correlates with civil war and insurgency, although wetter years are more likely to suffer from violent events. Extreme deviations in rainfall - particularly dry and wet years - are associated positively with all types of political conflict, though the relationship is strongest with respect to violent events, which are more responsive to abundant than scarce rainfall. By looking at a broader spectrum of social conflict, rather than limiting the analysis to civil war, we demonstrate a robust relationship between environmental shocks and unrest.

http://pscourses.ucsd.edu/poli120n/HendrixSalehyan2012.pdf

Climate change, rainfall, and social conflict in Africa:

Catherine Boone examines political regionalism in Africa and how it affects forms of government, and prospects for democracy and development. Boone's study is set within the context of larger theories of political development in agrarian societies. It features a series of compelling case studies that focus on regions within Senegal, Ghana, and Cote d'Ivoire and ranges from 1930 to the present. The book will be of interest to readers concerned with comparative politics, Africa, development, regionalism and federalism, and ethnic politics. Multi-country study of politics and political development in Africa. Book places African political development in the mainstream of studies of state-formation in agrarian studies. Study combines macrosociology with choice-theoretic perspectives in Political Science.

Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice

The African Frontier: the reproduction of traditional African societies

Underdevelopment in Kenya

By drawing on the current Marxist debate about the nature of the capitalist state, this article argues that the colonial state was obliged to be more interventionist than the mature capitalist state in its attempts to manage the economy, since colonies were distinguished by the way in which they articulated capitalism to local modes of production. This posed severe problems of social control, since the capitalist sector required the preservation of indigenous social institutions while also extracting resources from them. In early colonial Kenya this problem was mitigated by a rough compatibility between the needs of settler capital and the patronage exercised by African chiefs within a peasant sector which was expanded to solve the colonial administration's initial need for peace and revenue. The peasant sector was not destroyed, rather it was represented in the state, which never ceased thereafter to be plagued by the conflicts between the two modes of production over which it presided.

/pdf/coping-with-the-contradictions-the-development-of-the-4my8d5ggg1.pdf

Coping with the Contradictions: The Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895–1914

Beyond the Miracle of the Market: The political economy of agrarian development in Kenya

What does Kenya's crisis say to academic discussion about globalisation and the rise of local claims to ‘belong’, as autochthonous ‘sons of the soil’? The Kenya case supports the view that the changing relations between global pressures and states may exacerbate local conflicts that promote ethnocentric, exclusive concepts of belonging. But this article argues, further, for the importance of local concepts of self-worth and cultural value. Since Kenya's most ‘indigenous’ of peoples are the weakest, and almost all other Kenyans fairly recent immigrants, claims to territory are strategies justified by other arguments – to have improved the land, to have brought civilisation. Such managerial arguments do not help the poor, or women. Claims are evaluated according to an implicit moral hierarchy of ‘work’, and are best understood as expressions of local patriotism. These hold both generous and chauvinistic potential.

John Lonsdale

Papers

The African Frontier: the reproduction of traditional African societies

Underdevelopment in Kenya

Coping with the Contradictions: The Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895–1914

Beyond the Miracle of the Market: The political economy of agrarian development in Kenya

Soil, Work, Civilisation, and Citizenship in Kenya