Journal of Agrarian Change 

About: Journal of Agrarian Change is an academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Agrarian society & Agriculture. It has an ISSN identifier of 1471-0358. Over the lifetime, 826 publications have been published receiving 25720 citations.

Global Land Grabbing and Trajectories of Agrarian Change: A Preliminary Analysis

Abstract: ‘Land grab’ has become a catch-all phrase to refer to the current explosion of (trans)national commercial land transactions mainly revolving around the production and export of food, animal feed, biofuels, timber and minerals. Two key dimensions of the current land grab – namely, the politics of changes in land use and property relations change (and the links between them) – are not sufficiently explored in the current literature.We attempt to address this gap by offering a preliminary analysis through an analytical approach that suggests some typologies as a step towards a fuller and better understanding of the politics of global land grabbing.

Inequality and Social Conflict Over Land in Africa

Abstract: The paper proposes that reports of pervasive competition and conflict over land in sub-Saharan Africa belie a current image of negotiable and adaptive customary systems of landholding and land use but, instead, reveal processes of exclusion, deepening social divisions and class formation. Cases of ambiguous and indeterminate outcomes among claimants over land do occur, but the instances of intensifying conflict over land, deepening social rifts and expropriation of land beg for closer attention. More emphasis needs to be placed by analysts on who benefits and who loses from instances of ‘negotiability’ in access to land, an analysis that, in turn, needs to be situated in broader political economic and social changes taking place, particularly during the past thirty or so years. This requires a theoretical move away from privileging contingency, flexibility and negotiability that, willy-nilly, ends by suggesting an open field, to one that is able to identify those situations and processes (including commodification, structural adjustment, market liberalization and globalization) that limit or end negotiation and flexibility for certain social groups or categories.

Policy discourses on women's land rights in sub-Saharan Africa: the implications of the re-turn to the customary.

Abstract: This article examines some contemporary policy discourses on land tenure reform in sub–Saharan Africa and their implications for women's interests in land. It demonstrates an emerging consensus among a range of influential policy institutions, lawyers and academics about the potential of so–called customary systems of land tenure to meet the needs of all land users and claimants. This consensus, which has arisen out of critiques of past attempts at land titling and registration, particularly in Kenya, is rooted in modernizing discourses and/or evolutionary theories of land tenure and embraces particular and contested understandings of customary law and legal pluralism. It has also fed into a wide–ranging critique of the failures of the post–colonial state in Africa, which has been important in the current retreat of the state under structural adjustment programmes. African women lawyers, a minority dissenting voice, are much more equivocal about trusting the customary, preferring instead to look to the State for laws to protect women's interests. We agree that there are considerable problems with so–called customary systems of land tenure and administration for achieving gender justice with respect to women's land claims. Insufficient attention is being paid to power relations in the countryside and their implications for social groups, such as women, who are not well positioned and represented in local level power structures. But considerable changes to political and legal practices and cultures will be needed before African states can begin to deliver gender justice with respect to land.

Gender and Land Rights Revisited: Exploring New Prospects via the State, Family and Market

Abstract: The question of women’s land rights has a relatively young history in India. This paper briefly traces that history before examining why gendering the land question remains critical, and what the new possibilities are for enhancing women’s land access. Potentially, women can obtain land through the State, the family and the market. The paper explores the prospects and constraints linked to each, arguing that access through the family and the market deserve particular attention, since most arable land in India is privatized. On market access, the paper makes several departures from existing discussions by focusing on the advantages, especially for poor women, of working in groups to lease in or purchase land; using government credit for land rather than merely for micro-enterprises; and collectively managing purchased or leased in land, the collectivity being constituted with other women, rather than with family members. Such group functioning is shown to have several advantages over individual or family-based farming. This approach could also help revive land reform, community cooperation and joint farming in a radically new form, one centred on poor women.

Poverty and the Distribution of Land

Abstract: Redistributive land reforms have begun to attract the attention of scholars and policy makers once again. In this paper, we review old arguments and bring them up-to-date in the light of recent research. We begin with the case in favour of redistributive reforms focusing on fragmented factor markets and systems of labour control, of which concentration of land ownership is but one aspect. We then examine land reform in practice, focusing on distinct regional features and outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the transition economies of the former Soviet bloc and, as examples of success, East Asia (including China and Vietnam). Next we discuss the macroeconomic context and the two-way direction of causality between a redistribution of productive assets and the overall performance of the economy. We underline the importance of weakening the system of labour control, eliminating landlord bias and correcting urban bias. Finally, we argue that a prominent feature of all successful land reforms has been a high degree of land confiscation; full compensation and various types of ‘market friendly’ land reform are unlikely to be successful.