Showing papers in "Development and Change in 2009"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that access and property regarding natural resources are intimately bound up with the exercise of power and authority, and that the process of seeking authorizations for property claims also has the effect of granting authority to the authorizing politico-legal institution.
Abstract: In this introduction we argue that access and property regarding natural resources are intimately bound up with the exercise of power and authority. The process of seeking authorizations for property claims also has the effect of granting authority to the authorizing politico-legal institution. In consequence, struggles over natural resources in an institutionally pluralist context are processes of everyday state formation. Through the discussion of this theoretical proposition we point to legitimizing practices, territoriality and violence as offering particular insights into the recursively constituted relations between struggles over access and property regarding natural resources, contestations about power and authority, and state formation.
554 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a case study of a local conflict in the Kilosa District in Tanzania that tragically culminated in the killing of thirty-eight farmers on 8 December 2000, and argue that it is necessary to study the history of villagization and land use in the District, as well as national land tenure and pastoral policies.
Abstract: Farmer–herder conflicts in Africa are often presented as being driven by ‘environmental scarcity’. Political ecologists, however, argue that these conflicts should be analysed within a broader historical and policy context. This article presents a case study of a local conflict in the Kilosa District in Tanzania that tragically culminated in the killing of thirty-eight farmers on 8 December 2000. To understand the conflict, the authors argue that it is necessary to study the history of villagization and land use in the District, as well as national land tenure and pastoral policies. Attempts at agricultural modernization have fostered an anti-pastoral environment in Tanzania. The government aim is to confine livestock keeping to ‘pastoral villages’, but these villages lack sufficient pastures and water supplies, leading herders to search for such resources elsewhere. Pastoral access to wetlands is decreasing due to expansion of cultivated areas and the promotion of agriculture. The main tool that pastoralists still possess to counteract this trend is their ability to bribe officials. But corruption further undermines people's trust in authorities and in the willingness of these authorities to prevent conflicts. This leads actors to try to solve problems through other means, notably violence.
178 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare case histories of local struggles over land and authority in selected rural areas in Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Benin, arguing that in situations where access to land has been linked historically to claims on authority and social belonging, pressures to privatize or clarify ownership have intensified debates over citizenship and governance as well as over land claims per se.
Abstract: In the contemporary African context of rising competition and anxiety over access to land, neoliberal policy interventions designed to clarify property rights, broaden political participation and increase official accountability have frequently provoked rather than alleviated social and political conflict. Comparing case histories of local struggles over land and authority in selected rural areas in Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Benin, this paper argues that in situations where access to land has been linked historically to claims on authority and social belonging, pressures to privatize or clarify ownership have intensified debates over citizenship and governance as well as over land claims per se. Ensuing struggles over land and entitlement have intersected with national as well as local economic and political dynamics, reinforcing ‘traditional’ hierarchies, contributing to the proliferation of formal and informal governing agents and institutions, and frequently disrupting or subverting open governance and sustainable resource use, rather than helping to create conditions for sustainable development and democratization.
176 citations
TL;DR: The economic crisis of 2008-09 has resulted in a welcome change to the totally unsustainable trend of increasing carbon dioxide emissions as mentioned in this paper, which is in direct conflict with the availability of exhaustible resources and with the capacity of waste sinks.
Abstract: Economic growth is not compatible with environmental sustainability. The efforttopushuptherateofgrowthbyincreasingobligationstorepayfinancial debts is in direct conflict with the availability of exhaustible resources and withthecapacityofwastesinks.Theeconomiccrisisof2008‐09hasresulted in a welcome change to the totally unsustainable trend of increasing carbon dioxide emissions. The Kyoto Protocal of 1997 was generous to the rich countries,givingthempropertyrightsonthecarbonsinksandtheatmosphere in exchange for the promise of a reduction of 5 per cent of their emissions relative to1990. This modest Kyoto objective will be fulfilled more easily becauseoftheeconomiccrisis.Thisshowsthateconomicde-growth,leading to a steady state, is a plausible objective for the rich industrial economies. This would be supported by the environmental justice movements of the South, which are active in resource extraction conflicts.
173 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines how the legal systems of Andean countries have dealt with the region's huge plurality of local water rights, and how official policies to'recognize' local rights and identities harbor increasingly subtle politics of codification, confinement and disciplining.
Abstract: This article examines how the legal systems of Andean countries have dealt with the region's huge plurality of local water rights, and how official policies to 'recognize' local rights and identities harbour increasingly subtle politics of codification, confinement and disciplining. The autonomy and diversity of local water rights are a major hindrance for water companies, elites and formal rule-enforcers, since State and market institutions require a predictable, uniform playing field. Complex local rights orders are seen as irrational, ill-defined and disordered. Officialdom cannot simply ignore or oppress the 'unruliness and disobedience' of local rights systems: rather it 'incorporates' local normative orders that have the capacity to adequately respond to context-based needs. This article examines a number of evolving, overlapping legal domination strategies, such as the 'marrying' of local and official legal systems in ways that do not challenge the legal and power hierarchy; and reviews the ways in which official regulation and legal strategies deny or take into consideration local water rights repertoires, and the politics of recognition that these entail. Post-colonial recognition policies are not simply responses to demands by subjugated groups for greater autonomy. Rather, they facilitate the water bureaucracy's political control and help neoliberal sectors to incorporate local water users' rights and organizations into the market system ? even though many communities refuse to accept these policies of recognition and politics of containment
146 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a depoliticized vision of the contemporary Central American panorama of violence is presented, based on the example of Nicaragua, the country in the region that is historically perhaps most paradigmatically associated with violence.
Abstract: The political economy of violence in Central America is widely perceived as having undergone a critical shift during the past two decades, often pithily summarized as a movement from ‘political’ to ‘social’ violence. Although such an analysis is plausible, it also offers a depoliticized vision of the contemporary Central American panorama of violence. Basing itself principally on the example of Nicaragua, the country in the region that is historically perhaps most paradigmatically associated with violence, this article offers an alternative interpretation of the changes that the regional landscape of violence has undergone. It suggests that these are better understood as a movement from ‘peasant wars of the twentieth century’ (Wolf, 1969) to ‘urban wars of the twenty‐first century’ (Beall, 2006), thereby highlighting how present‐day urban violence can in many ways be seen as representing a structural continuation of past political conflicts, albeit in new spatial contexts. At the same time, however, there are certain key differences between past and present violence, as a result of which contemporary conflict has intensified. This is most visible in relation to the changing forms of urban spatial organization in Central American cities, the heavy‐handed mano dura response to gangs by governments, and the dystopian evolutionary trajectory of gangs. Taken together, these processes point to a critical shift in the balance of power between rich and poor in the region, as the new ‘urban wars of the twenty‐first century’ are increasingly giving way to more circumscribed ‘slum wars’ that effectively signal the defeat of the poor.
143 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present evidence from community-based projects in the slums of three large Indian cities and argue that municipal agencies, donors and NGOs cannot easily escape the logic of patronage and often themselves become part of a system of vertical dependency relations.
Abstract: Efforts aimed at urban poverty reduction and service delivery improvement
depend critically on slum dwellers’ collective agency. Adding to a long history
of community participation approaches, there is a now growing incidence
of so-called ‘partnerships’ between municipal agencies, non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and slum organizations. Such approaches require a
fair representation of a majority of the poor by local community-based organizations
(CBOs), the potential and interest of both poor men and women to
organize pro-actively in collective action, and a CBO leadership that works
for the common good. This article puts some key assumptions underlying
grassroots-based strategies under scrutiny. That relations amongst the urban
poor are unequal and that they are divided in terms of income, gender and
ethnicity has been well documented, but there has been less attention for
the fact that the poor, facing conditions of scarcity and competition, rely on
vertical relations of patronage and brokerage which may hinder or prevent
horizontal mobilization. Rather than being vehicles of empowerment and
change, CBOs and their leadership often block progress, controlling or capturing
benefits aimed at the poor and misusing them for private (political)
interests. Presenting evidence from community-based projects in the slums
of three large Indian cities, the article argues that municipal agencies, donors
and NGOs cannot easily escape the logic of patronage and often themselves
become part of a system of vertical dependency relations.
140 citations
TL;DR: Senegal's 1998 forestry code transfers rights to control and allocate forest access to elected rural councils, ostensibly giving the elected authorities significant material powers with respect to which they can represent the rural population as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Senegal's 1998 forestry code transfers rights to control and allocate forest access to elected rural councils, ostensibly giving the elected authorities significant material powers with respect to which they can represent the rural population. But the Forest Service is unwilling to allow rural councils to exercise these powers. To retain control, foresters use pressure, bribes and threats while taking advantage of the inability of the rural representatives to influence actors higher up in government. They justify themselves with arguments of national good and local incompetence. The foresters ally with urban-based forest merchants and are supported by the sub-prefect. Despite the transfer of forest rights, the foresters continue to allocate access to lucrative forest opportunities — in this case charcoal production and exchange — to the merchants. Despite holding effective property rights over forest, such as the right to exclude others, rural councils remain marginal and rural populations remain destitute. The councils cannot represent their populations and therefore cannot gain legitimacy: they have no authority. Despite progressive new laws, the Forest Service helps to maintain Senegal's healthy urban charcoal oligopsonies, while beating back fledgling local democracy.
123 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a sample survey and interviews at two gold-mining sites in Tanzania were conducted to investigate when and why miners leave one site in favor of another, finding that movement is often "rushed" but rarely rash.
Abstract: African rural dwellers have faced depressed economic prospects for several decades. Now, in a number of mineral-rich countries, multiple discoveries of gold and precious stones have attracted large numbers of prospective small-scale miners. While their ‘rush’ to, and activities within, mining sites are increasingly being noted, there is little analysis of miners' mobility patterns and material outcomes. In this article, on the basis of a sample survey and interviews at two gold-mining sites in Tanzania, we probe when and why miners leave one site in favour of another. Our findings indicate that movement is often ‘rushed’ but rarely rash. Whereas movement to the first site may be an adventure, movement to subsequent sites is calculated with knowledge of the many risks entailed. Miners spend considerable time at each site before migrating onwards. Those with the highest site mobility tend to be more affluent than the others, suggesting that movement can be rewarding for those willing to ‘try their luck’ with the hard work and social networking demands of mining another site.
108 citations
TL;DR: In the early stages of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the communities affected were low-income, mainly African-American or immigrant (Hispanics), in cities like Cleveland and Detroit that were in any case already blighted and deteriorated as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Something ominous began to happen in 2006. The rate of foreclosures in low-income areas of older US cities began to increase. Officialdom and the media took very little notice because, as had happened many years before in the early stages of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the communities affected were low-income, mainly African-American or immigrant (Hispanics), in cities like Cleveland and Detroit that were in any case already blighted and deteriorated. It was only in mid-2007, when the foreclosure wave had spread to white middle class areas as well as to the US South (Florida in particular) and Southwest (California), where new housing tract developments, often in peripheral areas, were becoming vulnerable, that officialdom started to take notice and the mainstream press began to comment. By the end of that year, nearly 2 million people had lost their homes and estimates began to emerge that another 4 or perhaps 6 million more might be lost before it was all over. By the autumn of 2008, the phenomenon of the ‘sub-prime mortgage crisis’ had led to the demise of all the major Wall Street Investment Banks, either through change of status or through forced mergers, and the outright bankruptcy of Lehman that triggered a worldwide collapse of confidence in financial institutions. The contagion then spread outwards from banking to the major holders of mortgage debt (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) along with insurance giants like AIG, before hitting the rest of the economy bigtime towards the end of 2008. By early 2009 the export-led industrialization model that had generated such spectacular growth in East and Southeast Asia was contracting at an alarming rate; at the same time, many icons of American capitalism, such as General Motors, were moving closer to bankruptcy.
106 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that access and property regarding natural resources are intimately bound up with the exercise of power and authority, and that the process of seeking authorizations for property claims also has the effect of granting authority to the authorizing politico-legal institution.
Abstract: In this introduction we argue that access and property regarding natural resources are intimately bound up with the exercise of power and authority. The process of seeking authorizations for property claims also has the effect of granting authority to the authorizing politico-legal institution. In consequence, struggles over natural resources in an institutionally pluralist context are processes of everyday state formation. Through the discussion of this theoretical proposition we point to legitimizing practices, territoriality and violence as offering particular insights into the recursively constituted relations between struggles over access and property regarding natural resources, contestations about power and authority, and state formation.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors make connections between often-disparate literatures on property, violence and identity, using the politics of rubber growing in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, as an example.
Abstract: This article makes connections between often-disparate literatures on property, violence and identity, using the politics of rubber growing in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, as an example. It shows how rubber production gave rise to territorialities associated with and productive of ethnic identities, depending on both the political economies and cultural politics at play in different moments. What it meant to be Chinese and Dayak in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia, as well as how categories of subjects and citizens were configured in the two respective periods, differentially affected both the formal property rights and the means of access to rubber and land in different parts of West Kalimantan. However, incremental changes in shifting rubber production practices were not the only means of producing territory and ethnicity. The author argues that violence ultimately played a more significant role in erasing prior identity-based claims and establishing the controls of new actors over trees and land and their claims to legitimate access or ‘rightfulness’. Changing rubber production practices and reconfigurations of racialized territories and identity-based property rights are all implicated in hiding the violence.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a set of rules that are based on the principle of equality of persons and the right of individuals to be treated equally under the law, including the right to be discriminated against or discriminated against.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that by promoting community-based organizations (CBOs), national and transnational development actors have produced and legitimated a system of popular participation that, in contrast to their claims, disempowers local citizens.
Abstract: The current discourse and practice of international development rest on the assumption that community-based participation is an essential component of efforts to facilitate change across the global South. Such participation is thought not only to ensure efficiency and sustainability, but also to accelerate broader structural transformation by empowering individuals to exercise agency in relation to development. This article seeks to contribute to critical participation studies by analysing the broader processes and structures that shape participatory opportunities in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The author argues that by promoting community-based organizations (CBOs), national and transnational development actors have produced and legitimated a system of popular participation that, in contrast to their claims, disempowers local citizens. Paradoxically, these CBOs have further contributed to the exclusion of the majority of community actors.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that a primary function of concepts such as Capacity Development is to meet the legitimacy requirements of development assistance organizations, and that the more the effectiveness of these organizations is criticized or challenged, the more they feel the need to defend themselves by developing new concepts.
Abstract: Sociological studies of organizational fashions tend to focus on commercial firms. This article looks at the Capacity Development concept that is globally applied as a model in governmentally supported development assistance organizations. The organizations themselves adopt the concept, asserting that an increase in 'capacities' in developing countries will contribute to a higher success rate for projects. This article argues that a primary function of concepts such as Capacity Development is to meet the legitimacy requirements of development assistance organizations. The more the effectiveness of these organizations is criticized or challenged, the more they feel the need to defend themselves by developing new - and hopefully more effective - concepts.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that climate change cannot be stopped while fossil fuel capitalism remains the dominant system and what has to be done to avoid the worst-case consequences of global warming.
Abstract: Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
(Robert Frost, ‘Fire and Ice’,
New Hampshire 1923)
ABSTRACT
Can climate change be stopped while fossil fuel capitalism remains the dominant system? What has to be done and what has to change to avoid the worst-case consequences of global warming? These questions are debated in the six contributions which follow. This introduction to the debate sets the stage and puts the often widely diverging views in context, distinguishing two axes of debate. The first axis (‘market vs. regulation’) measures faith in the invisible hand to adjust the natural thermostat. The second axis expresses differences in views on the efficiency and equity implications of climate action. While the contributions do differ along these axes, most authors agree that capitalism's institutions need to be drastically reformed and made fundamentally more equitable. This means a much broader agenda for the climate movement (going beyond carbon trading and technocratic discussion of mitigation options). What is needed for climate stability is a systemic transformation based on growth scepticism, a planned transition to a non-fossil fuel economy, democratic reform, climate justice, and changed global knowledge and corporate and financial power structures.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compared the impacts of participation in middle-class colonies with those in slums and found that direct community participation empowers influential community members, small private entrepreneurs and middlemen, and contributes to labour informalization.
Abstract: This article questions the participatory dimension of urban governance in Mumbai. Based on surveys of a number of participatory projects for urban services, it compares the differentiated impacts of participation in middle-class colonies with those in slums. Results demonstrate that changing citizen–government relationships have led to the empowerment of the middle and upper middle class who harness the potential of new ‘invited space’ to expand their claims on the city and political space. In contrast, the poor end up on the losing side as NGOs function more as contracted agents of the State than as representatives of the poor. Direct community participation empowers influential community members, small private entrepreneurs and middlemen, and contributes to labour informalization. Ultimately, these processes consolidate a form of ‘governing beyond the State’ that promotes a managerial vision of participation and leads to double standards of citizenship.
TL;DR: In the context of the Nam Theun 2 (NT2) hydropower scheme in Laos, the authors examined the effects of the World Bank's participatory agenda in one of its flagship projects, and showed that participation is a negotiated performance whereby competing representations emerge through the interaction between village, state and international actors.
Abstract: The omnipotence of the World Bank on a global scale means that it is often regarded as the most influential partner in bringing about transformations in developing countries. This article contributes to ongoing discussions of this issue by examining some effects of the Bank's participatory agenda in one of its flagship projects, the Nam Theun 2 (NT2) hydropower scheme in Laos. Critical accounts suggest that the Bank's promotion of participation in donor-dependent countries like Laos is either a guise or an imposition. These propositions are considered in two settings where participation was debated around the time of the Bank's loan appraisal for NT2: first, an international stakeholders' workshop held in Vientiane; and second, some international attempts to identify the concerns of villagers living near the NT2 dam site. In workshops and villages, participation is a negotiated performance whereby competing representations emerge through the interaction between village, state and international actors. More generally, this article shows that a grounded view of development can attend to the practices that constrain the hegemonic tendencies of the World Bank, even while maintaining awareness of the potency of its policies and interventions.
[...]
TL;DR: The authors examines the implications of the neoliberal turn for the "right to the city" as the fundamental tenet of urban citizenship and argues that the neoliberal city remains a highly contested urbanity in which poor inhabitants continue to struggle for citizenship in highly diverse ways.
Abstract: Modern cities have always been the locus of both inequality and opportunity. However, neoliberal policies pursued since the 1980s have intensified urban disparities. Cities are increasingly shaped more by the logic of the market than the needs of their inhabitants. This article, which introduces a collection of papers on the topic, examines the implications of the neoliberal turn for the ‘right to the city’ as the fundamental tenet of urban citizenship. While evidence suggests a formidable challenge from market forces to the ‘right to the city’, the authors argue that the neoliberal city remains a highly contested urbanity in which poor inhabitants continue to struggle for citizenship in highly diverse ways. The challenge for scholarship is to discover and document those intricate modes of claim-making.
TL;DR: The Greenhouse Development Rights framework (GDRs) as mentioned in this paper is a proposal for such a fair division of the burdens of emissions reductions and adaptation to climate change that won't be avoided, based on an assessment of capacity (ability to pay) and responsibility (contribution to the problem).
Abstract: The urgency of the climate problem seems to require that stringent emissions reductions begin under the political economic institutions that currently exist. Any global climate treaty must, however, at least not make global inequality worse, and ideally should embody desirable principles of justice. The Greenhouse Development Rights framework (GDRs), described briefly here, is a proposal for such a fair division of the burdens of emissions reductions and adaptation to climate change that won't be avoided, based on an assessment of capacity (ability to pay) and responsibility (contribution to the problem). The GDRs considers both inequality within countries and inequality between countries: national obligations are based on the exemption of poor individuals (under a ‘development threshold’) from global burdens. GDRs accepts the link between ‘development’ and the growth in consumption of the world's poor majority, an obvious requirement if it is to be taken seriously by Southern governments intent on ‘development as usual’. It also does not directly challenge the institutions of capitalism or the sovereignty of nation states. Nonetheless, in its focus on poor and rich people it is consistent with a class-based rather than nation-based approach to economic justice. We conclude by raising a variety of questions both about the limits of approaches like GDRs, and the need for policies that address climate change even during or after a transition beyond the current global capitalist regime.
TL;DR: The need for an immediate start to a programme of phasing out both fossil fuels and purported fossil fuel substitutes such as nuclear power and industrial-scale agrofuels was highlighted by as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The climate crisis and the credit crisis have made the political issues surrounding investment and finance more critical than ever before. Proposals for ‘Green New Deals’ and the like — aimed at tackling both global warming and global recession — are streaming forth worldwide. Yet many such proposals are incoherent in that they overlook the need for an immediate start to a programme of phasing out both fossil fuels and purported fossil fuel substitutes such as nuclear power and industrial-scale agrofuels. They also tend to rely on Northern-biased conceptions of technology transfer and intellectual property that the climate crisis has helped make obsolete. To overcome these problems, future climate movements will have to focus increasingly on the democratization of research, planning and finance.
TL;DR: The authors argue that to address this problem properly, nothing less than an ecological revolution is required, where we replace the current capitalist system with one based on meeting human needs in a sustainable way, not furthering capital accumulation.
Abstract: Global climate change is perhaps the most serious problem the world faces. Despite its severity, mainstream economic approaches to addressing the problem fail to get to the root cause — the capitalist global economy — falling instead for ‘the Midas Effect’, the notion that ecological values can be converted into economic values. Here we highlight the severity of the global climate crisis, which requires that atmospheric carbon levels be reduced (to 350 ppm), and explain how capitalism is the primary driving force behind this crisis. We argue that to address this problem properly, nothing less than an ecological revolution is required, where we replace the current capitalist system with one based on meeting human needs in a sustainable way, not furthering capital accumulation.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine how the narratives of identity are constructed and transformed within Iranian (charity) networks and identify the factors that contribute to this transformation, and use the transnational lens to view diasporic positioning as linked to development issues.
Abstract: This article looks at the shifting position of the 'Iranian diaspora' in relation to Iran as it is influenced by online and offline transnational networks. In the 1980s the exilic identity of a large part of the Iranian diaspora was the core factor in establishing an extended, yet exclusive form of transnational network. Since then, the patterns of identity within this community have shifted towards a more inclusive network as a result of those transnational connections, leading to more extensive and intense connections and activities between the Iranian diaspora and Iranians in Iran. The main concern of the article is to examine how the narratives of identity are constructed and transformed within Iranian (charity) networks and to identify the factors that contribute to this transformation. The authors use the transnational lens to view diasporic positioning as linked to development issues. New technological sources help diaspora groups, in this case Iranians, to build virtual embedded ties that transcend nation states and borders. Yet, the study also shows that these transnational connections can still be challenged by the nation state, as has been the case with recent developments in Iran. © Institute of Social Studies 2009.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the merging of security and development agendas in primary commodity sectors, focusing on the case of peace-building reforms in Sierra Leone's diamond sector and found that the industrialization of alluvial diamond mining has not reduced threats to security, as human rights abuses and impoverishment of local communities without consolidating state fiscal revenues and trust in local authorities.
Abstract: This article examines the merging of security and development agendas in primary commodity sectors, focusing on the case of peace-building reforms in Sierra Leone's diamond sector Reformers frequently assume that reforming the diamond sector through industrializing alluvial diamond mining will reduce threats to security and development, thereby contributing to peace building Our findings, however, suggest that the industrialization of alluvial diamond mining that has taken place in Sierra Leone has not reduced threats to security and development, as it has entailed human rights abuses and impoverishment of local communities without consolidating state fiscal revenues and trust in local authorities This suggests alternative strategies for resource-related peace-building initiatives, which we consider at the end of the article: the decriminalization of informal economic activities; the prioritization of local livelihoods and development needs over central government fiscal priorities and foreign direct investment; and better integration between local economies and industrial resource exploitation
TL;DR: In this article, the role of the state in Kutch during a transfer of 30 km2 of forest and coastal land to a cement manufacturing and exporting operation is discussed, and the authors suggest that the state's role in this alliance is that of a normative legitimator of liberalization, a buffer in the contentious politics of land, and an institutional promoter of and manoeuvrer through the new land regime.
Abstract: There has been much discussion recently on the ‘great Indian land grab’, that is, the acquisition of productive land by the government, and the handing over of this land to large-scale industry. What do these ongoing land transfers tell us about the nature of the state? This article builds a picture of the state in a liberalizing landscape based on empirical evidence. It outlines the role of the state in Kutch during a transfer of 30 km2 of forest and coastal land to a cement manufacturing and exporting operation ‘Karkhana Ltd.’ (pseudonym). Karkhana's experience does not evince a state in withdrawal. Nor do we witness a regulatory state that watches a changing economy from the legal and coercive sidelines. Instead, the case study is able to reinforce heterodox perspectives that place the state at the centre of India's new economy as a close ally of big capital. Taking these views forward, the author suggests that the state's role in this alliance is that of a normative legitimator of liberalization, a buffer in the contentious politics of land, and an institutional promoter of and manoeuvrer through the new land regime. A multifaceted state is indispensable to India's liberalizing landscape.
TL;DR: In addition to land titles, different actions are used to secure property rights, drawing on other authorities which represent plural sources of recognition of land rights as mentioned in this paper, and land transactions are often not followed up with titling and inscription in the name of the new owner, especially not among the poorest landowners.
Abstract: Despite the overreaching importance that the international donor community places on formal land titles as part of the process for securing property rights, improving the functioning of the land market and ensuring pro-poor development, little attention is given to the specific ways in which factors such as inequality and abuses of public office mediate or even negate the expected effect of land titles. Based on empirical data from Nicaragua, this article shows that the state system is costly and does not provide a level playing field. In addition to land titles, different actions are used to secure property rights, drawing on other authorities which represent plural sources of recognition of land rights. Furthermore, the study shows that land transactions are often not followed up with titling and inscription in the name of the new owner, especially not among the poorest landowners. This has implications for future land titling policies.
TL;DR: In Botswana, the entangling of natural resource policy with identity politics contributed to a partial recentralization of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in 2007.
Abstract: Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), once presented as the best way to protect common pool natural resources, now attracts a growing chorus of critiques that either question its underlying assumptions or emphasize problems related to institutional design. These critiques overlook connections between the definition of rights to natural resources and membership in political communities. The potential for competing definitions of political identity and rights across natural resources arises when property rights regimes differ across natural resources and these different systems of rights appeal to alternative definitions of community. In Botswana, the entangling of natural resource policy with identity politics contributed to a partial recentralization of CBNRM in 2007.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the World Bank-funded Kecamatan Development Program (KDP) in Indonesia, a project that is viewed by some as being somewhat unorthodox, and argue that what is really different about KDP, compared with older approaches to market-led development typical of the Washington consensus, is the manner in which it delivers its mix of neoliberalism.
Abstract: This article seeks to reconceptualize the post-Washington consensus (PWC) by focusing not simply upon the institutional structures and ideology promoted by it, but the manner in which these are promoted on the ground. The aim is to reveal a central distinction between the Washington consensus and the PWC that has been somewhat neglected: their diverging approaches to implementation. The author focuses on the World Bank-funded Kecamatan Development Program (KDP) in Indonesia, a project that is viewed by some as being somewhat unorthodox. He argues that in addition to its promotion of the latest round of institutional reforms, what is really different about KDP, compared with older approaches to market-led development typical of the Washington consensus, is the manner in which it delivers its mix of neoliberalism. What is radical about a programme like KDP is that it constitutes a new Trojan horse for embedding market-centred norms and practices.1 In general, this is demonstrative of a key difference between the Washington consensus and the PWC that has been undervalued in many analyses of the dominant development paradigm: the methods used to embed and sustain liberal markets.