Orphans’ Land Rights in Post‐War Rwanda: The Problem of Guardianship

In 1994, the Rwandan civil war and genocide produced thousands of orphans. Alongside the war, the growing HIV/AIDS crisis in Rwanda has produced a current population of about 300,000 orphans — many of whom are compelled to head households. These orphans urgently require land use rights, but many find that their rights to their deceased parents’ customary land holdings are denied or restricted by their guardians and others. Despite the legal protections for children that are guaranteed within Rwanda's laws, the reality is that many guardians do not respect orphans’ land rights and few orphans have sufficient access to administrative and legal forums to assert and defend these rights. In contrast to most accounts in the literature that discuss more generally the issue of African orphans’ land rights in the context of adults’ land rights, this article focuses on specific cases in which Rwandan orphans independently pursued their land rights. Ultimately, the article concludes that in Rwanda — and elsewhere in Africa — government officials should re‐examine their ideas about guardianship and grant orphans urgent attention as individuals and as a special interest group.     

Ruling by Record: The Meaning of Rights,Rules and Registration in an Andean Comunidad

This contribution looks at land property relations in a peasant community in the central highlands of Peru. Rather than using a rights‐based approach, the authors propose a ‘practice force field approach’ for their analysis of property relations under communal land tenure regimes. Their study combines qualitative ethnographic case studies with quantitative analysis of data on land distribution. In contrast to rights‐based approaches, this perspective understands the legal discourses that people draw upon to explain property relations as ‘justifying rule talk’ rather than the reflection of a system of property rights. It is shown how property relations are shaped in mediated interactive processes, where official rules, moral principles, shared histories and strategic games come together. The authors use this practice force field approach to study Usibamba, an Andean community that has developed a true disciplinary regime of communal governance based on control over land. The role of ‘rule talk’ and the function of elaborate local systems of land registration are examined in the context of the annual reallocation of communal land. Particular attention is paid to the performance of the president of the comunidad during this delicate process and his reflections on the course of events.     

The State and Financialization of Public Land in the United Kingdom

There exists an influential and growing political‐economic literature on the treatment of land—urban and rural—as a financial asset. But this literature pays little attention to the role of the state, beyond its obvious significance in the formalization of tradable property rights. In particular, the issue of the state's own land, i.e. public land, has been afforded scant scrutiny. Has the state, like other actors, increasingly come to treat the land it owns as a form of financial asset? And if so, how, and with what implications? This article addresses these questions by way of an empirical focus on the history of the UK public estate since the beginning of the 1980s.     

Land Rights under Stress in Darfur: A Volatile Dynamic of the Conflict

Abstract

The aggravation of land rights over time in Darfur was a primary factor in the initiation of the conflict, and has emerged as a particularly dif?cult set of issues in the search for viable peace. While the prospect of being able to keep land acquired in course of the conflict was a primary factor in recruitment for the Janjaweed, it came on the heels of a set of changes in the environment, land use and population patterns, institutions, law and governance that produced a highly unwieldy and volatile land rights scenario. This article explores the role of land tenure in the Darfur conflict, examining the aggravation of rights, custom, and law over time, and then focusing on two of the primary war-related tenure problems currently facing Darfur — use of land rights as tools of belligerence, and the land dispossession — secondary occupation problem.     

Gender,Traditional Authority,and the Politics of Rural Reform in South Africa

The new South African Constitution, together with later policies and legislation, affirm a commitment to gender rights that is incompatible with the formal recognition afforded to unelected traditional authorities. This contradiction is particularly evident in the case of land reform in many rural areas, where women’s right of access to land is denied through the practice of customary law. This article illustrates the ways in which these constitutional contradictions play out with particular intensity in the ‘former homelands’ through the example of a conflict over land use in Buffelspruit, Mpumalanga province. There, a number of women who had been granted informal access to communal land for the purposes of subsistence cultivation had their rights revoked by the traditional authority. Despite desperate protests, they continue to be marginalized in terms of access to land, while their male counterparts appropriate communal land for commercial farming and cattle grazing. Drawing on this protest, we argue that current South African practice in relation to the pressing issue of gender equity in land reform represents a politics of accommodation and evasion that tends to reinforce gender biases in rural development, and in so doing, undermines the prospects for genuinely radical transformation of the instituted geographies and institutionalized practices bequeathed by the apartheid regime.     

Authority over Forests: Empowerment and Subordination in Senegal's Democratic Decentralization

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.     

The reformation of Iraq's foreign relations: new elites and enduring legacies

Iraq has not enjoyed regular foreign relations since 2003, and arguably for several years before. Looking ahead, Iraq is now in a position to develop its foreign relations fully, yet how these relations will be constructed remains unclear. As with all states, Iraq's foreign policy remains conditioned by geopolitical factors— and in particular control of resources, access to waterways, and its geographical location between the Arab world, Turkey, and Iran. There are also the legacies of the Ba'athist regime to consider—and especially the way foreign policy was constructed, and how ‘foreign’ was defined in terms of foreign to the regime, rather than to Iraq. Layered on top of these geopolitical determinants and legacies is the reality of the post‐2003 state. With the removal of the structures of the Ba'athist regime and the emergence of new political elites under the guidance of the US, Iraq's foreign relations are now clearly different, yet some of the patterns of the past still remain very much in place.     

Land as fictitious commodity: the continuing evolution of women's land rights in Uganda

In sub-Saharan Africa, colonial influences have altered traditional practices as a way to manage that which Polanyi labeled as ‘fictitious commodities’ of land, labor, and money. Land has now become a highly marketable commodity and an intrinsic part of the global economy. Over the past century, Uganda's land rights have evolved from communal rights to that of male-dominated, individual ownership practices that have excluded women. Despite constitutional provisions, which confer title of both a deceased husband's property rights and equal rights to property within a marriage to a wife, postcolonial patriarchal tradition prevails. This article examines historical changes in land rights in Uganda and discusses the impact of shifts in land rights from communal ownership to individual tenure, altering power structures and attempting to create marketable land title. The Ugandan women's movement's opposition to policies and implementation of laws that exclude women has been unable to facilitate the required changes in unbiased access to land rights, despite apparent victories in revisions to the letter of the law. Situated within contemporary interpretations of tradition and pressures of market demand, this article shows that women's access to landownership and use are restricted by misinterpretation of traditional law and a lack of enforcement of contemporary legal rights. To illustrate the impact of a lack of access to land, this article examines an empirical case study of widowed subsistence farmers in southern Uganda. Women in Uganda continue to lose ground, quite literally, decreasing the possibility of gender equity in terms of land.     

The United States and Myanmar: a ‘boutique issue’?

Myanmar has been one of a number of countries that the new American Executive branch selected for policy reconsideration. The Obama administration's review of relations with Myanmar, characterized as a ‘boutique issue’ during the presidential campaign, has received considerable attention in 2009, and in part was prompted by quiet signals sent by both sides that improved relations were desirable. Begun as an intense policy review by various agencies, it has been supplemented by the first visits in 15 years to the country by senior US officials. The policy conclusion, that sanctions must remain in place but will be supplemented by dialogue, is a politically realistic compromise given the strong congressional and public antipathy to the military regime and the admiration for Aung San Suu Kyi, whose purported views have shaped US policies. US claims of the importance of Myanmar as a security and foreign policy concern have also been a product of internal US considerations as well as regional realities. US—Burmese relations since independence have been strongly influenced by the Cold War and China, whose strategic interests in Myanmar have been ignored in the public dialogue on policy until recently, with US policy focused on political and human rights concerns. Attention is now concentrated on parliamentary and local elections to be held in 2010, after which the new constitution will come into effect and provide the military with a taut reign on critical national policies while allowing opposition voices. Future relations will be strongly influenced by the transparency and freedom both of the campaigning and vote counting, and the role—if any—of the opposition National League for Democracy. Strong scepticism exists in the US on prospects unless the Burmese institute extensive reforms. The Burmese military, presently controlling all avenues of social mobility, will have a major role in society for decades. The article initially evaluates US policies towards Myanmar prior to 1988, when a military coup marked a negative shift in US—Myanmar relations, from cooperation to a US sanctions regime. It looks at the influence China's involvement in Myanmar and the role Aung San Suu Kyi have had on the formulation of US policy towards the country and assesses the prospects for the US‐Myanmar relationship under the Obama administration.     

Intertextual relations: The geopolitics of land rights in Thailand

This paper explores the geopolitics surrounding the “modernization” of the formal property rights regime in land in Thailand (formerly Siam) from the mid 1850s to the late 1930s. The paper argues that this weak, peripheral state, in pursuit of international recognition of territorial and jurisdictional sovereignty, employed a strategy of “counter-spatialization” in order to mitigate or deny claims for control over natural resources and population groups by imperial powers. The intertextual dimensions of this “spatial” mode of resistance are elucidated through a close reading of the ways in which diplomatic negotiations of a series of unequal treaties, beginning with the Anglo-Siamese treaty of 1855, shaped—and were shaped by—the formulation and implementation of regulations governing formal property rights in land in Siam. The political economy of land rights at the large scale (local implementation of land titling) and the medium scale (enactment of national land laws) was nested within a process of geopolitical contestation over land rights at the small scale (international recognition of Siamese territorial sovereignty).     

Post‐Conflict Ambon: Forced Migration and the Ethno‐Territorial Effects of Customary Tenure

In post‐conflict contexts characterized by large‐scale migration and increasing levels of legal pluralism, customary land tenure risks being deployed as a tool of ethno‐territorialization in which displaced communities are denied return and secure land rights. This thesis will be illustrated through a case study of the Indonesian island of Ambon where a recognition of customary tenure — also called adat — was initiated in 2005 at the end of a high‐intensity conflict between Christians and Muslims. Although a system of land tenure providing multiple forms of social security for the indigenous in‐group, adat in Ambon also constitutes an arena of power in which populations considered as non‐indigenous to a fixed historical territory are pushed into an inferior legal position. The legal registration of customary tenure therefore tends to be deployed to settle long‐standing land contests with a growing migrant community, hereby legally enforcing some of the forced expulsions that were brought about by the recent communal violence.     

Accessibility interrupted: the Shimshal road,Gilgit‐Baltistan,Pakistan

Geographers working in mountainous northern Pakistan note that gains in accessibility following the Karakoram Highway's official opening in 1978 significantly reshaped social organization, economic activity, and land use across the region. These valuable regional‐scale analyses provide few insights regarding the contingent and variable ways new roads are conceived and experienced at the community and household level by the people whose mobility they drastically impact. This article addresses that limitation of regional research by focusing on an individual agricultural community called Shimshal that in 2003 completed a 40‐kilometre link‐road connecting it to the highway. Drawing from qualitative information gathered before and after the Shimshal road's completion, we briefly describe the community's motivation for constructing the road, villagers’ accessibility‐related hopes and concerns as it was being built, and some of the social, cultural, and economic changes that followed the road's completion. The article concludes by summarizing the community's response so far to landslide‐induced destruction of over 20 kilometres of the Karakoram Highway which, since January 2010, has left community members without vehicular access to the rest of Pakistan just seven years after their link‐road's completion.     

A normative case for pluralism: reassessing Vincent's views on humanitarian intervention

While R. J. Vincent's overall goal in Human rights and International Relations was to demonstrate how human rights might be promoted in international society, there was one area in which he was sceptical about allowing human rights to serve as the basis for international conduct: military intervention. This article begins by demonstrating that Vincent's greatest fear—that legitimizing humanitarian intervention would lead to countless wars—has proved largely unfounded. Nonintervention in the face of gross violations of human rights has marked the post‐Cold War period more than rampant interventionism. Moreover, while the use of force for humanitarian purposes has become acceptable in very exceptional circumstances, the manner in which it has been legitimized and the depth of the consensus around its appropriateness illustrate lingering scepticism among states about infringements of sovereignty. The article concludes by showing how Vincent's writings on humanitarian intervention, in particular his caution about an imperialist advance of cosmopolitanism, might provide a basis for a more robust normative defence of pluralism in contemporary international society.     

Civilized Borders: A Study of Israel's New Crossing Administration

Abstract: At Israel's new border crossings with the West Bank, modernization has become the buzz‐word: not only referring to modernized mechanical means—a Wall, newly designed crossings, and micro‐mechanics such as turnstiles, signs, and fences—but also to new and sophisticated scientific technologies, such as sensor machines and scanners, and to modernized means of identification, such as advanced computer systems and biometric cards. This paper considers the transformation of the Israel–West Bank border to be a result of four major processes: reterritorialization, bureaucratization, neoliberalization, and de‐humanization. I utilize in‐depth interviews with top military and state officials and with human rights activists as well as a series of participatory observations to explore the on‐the‐ground implications of the borders’ transformation.     

Semi‐Authoritarian Incorporation and Autocratic Militarism in Turkey

This article argues that, since the early 1980s, there have been two regimes in Turkey. The first, which is broadly akin to Michael Mann's characterization of Semi‐Authoritarian Incorporation, has predominated in areas of the country not administered through emergency legislation. In keeping with his model, it has been most fully asserted in areas of key economic value — particularly the Marmara region and the environs of the capital, Ankara. In the thirteen predominantly Kurdish provinces of the south‐east of the country, on the other hand, a second of Mann's regime types, Autocratic Militarism, is discernible. This was institutionalized under a new constitutional structure introduced following the 1980 coup as a means of dealing with a rise in pro‐Kurdish insurgency.     

中华人民共和国史研究的现状

20世纪80年代初以来,中华人民共和国史研究逐渐在学术界兴起,经过近30年的努力取得了引人瞩目的成果:建立了正式的研究机构和学术团体,形成了具有一定规模的研究队伍;编辑出版了大量档案文献,为学术研究提供了有利条件;发表或出版了大量研究成果,推进了学术研究的深入发展;纳入了国民教育体系,为学术研究的持续发展培养了一批专门人才。今后需要进一步明确学科定位,拓宽研究视野,加强学科建设,挖掘档案文献。     

Aquatic Identities,Fluid Economies: Water Affinities and Authenticating Narratives of Belonging in East Timorese Myth and Ritual

ABSTRACT Customary land tenure claims provide a useful analogy for customary access and usage rights to critical water resources. In an increasingly water‐constrained future, such rights are at risk of political and economic contestation and local communities may find themselves abruptly divested of critical water resources just when they need them most. The new nation of East Timor is not abundantly endowed with water and inland sources are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of reduced rainfall and groundwater contamination. Recently McWilliam (2003) has suggested that in future disputes over Timorese sea tenures, the recognition of customary access or exclusive property rights to specific water resources will depend upon clearly articulated evidence of longstanding cultural associations and interactions with the aquatic landscape. The ethnographic literature provides substantiating accounts of the centrality of water in the local cosmologies of various East Timorese ethnic groups. This paper extends McWilliam's marine argument to inland water resources by reviewing the salient ethnographic evidence for Bunaq, Mumbai and Eastern Tetum populations to show that water is a key organising metaphor in the expression of Timorese kingroup affiliation, social identity and power relations. Local ritual practices further affirm customary rights of access and water use. There is an urgent need for such customary rights to water to be recognized in the current redistribution and demarcation of internal boundaries in East Timor, as well as in future struggles against vested economic and political interests.     

Current Literature

A noted specialist on China's urban and economic geography investigates the processes underlying the massive and occasionally wasteful practice of land development that has accompanied China's rapid economic advance. By critically juxtaposing elements of conventional neoliberal economic theory (e.g., the so-called "tragedy of the commons") with the actual exercise of land property rights and the practice of land development in transitional China, he argues that, contrary to Western experience, land property rights have evolved from the bottom up and thus functioned not as a bundle of standardized and uniform legal prerogatives but rather as a diverse set of local practices adaptable to regional conditions. The author illustrates these processes though a thorough review of Chinese laws and regulations as well as a case study of land development in a province (Guangdong) in which land development has been allowed to proceed more rapidly under a special economic regime and exposure to global forces. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: P260, Q150, R140, R520. 2 figures, 1 table, 95 references.     

Social Centers in Southern Italy: The Caserta Ex‐Canapificio Between Illegality,Migration, and Rurality

From the 1980s to the 1990s, squatting for Social Centers (Centri Sociali) has developed as radical left activists engaged in occupying empty buildings all over Italy. While most of the occupations happened in big cities in the Centre and North of Italy, this paper examines the peculiarity of the Social Center Ex‐Canapificio, located in a medium‐size city of an agricultural plain of Southern Italy. More specifically, three particular points are discussed. First, I show how the Social Center has been able to produce access to rights in a context of informality and illegality. Then, I analyze how the Social Center has allowed the setting up of an original social movement fighting for the rights of the poor immigrant workers living in the Campanian Plain. Finally, I enlighten how Ex‐Canapificio's activists have promoted new strategies to succeed in their struggles, despite their geographical distance from the main center of powers. In brief, this paper provides several themes of discussion about the spatialities of squatting and social movements.     

Electoral Pluralism,Social Division and the 2016 Parliamentary Elections in Jordan

Representing one of the most stable regimes in the Middle East, Jordan has been undergoing a process of political liberalization since 1989. Due to the so‐called East Bank‐West Bank cleavage that followed by the influx of Palestinian migrants to Jordan, the country has also come to epitomize a divided society. Within this context, this paper aims to analyze the ongoing prospects for democratization in Jordan through an examination of four persistent debates shaping its electoral pluralism: those over social/identity division, electoral law as a regime‐survival mechanism, the role of the Ikhwan and the IAF's electoral boycotts, and electoral apathy. Finally, the impact of the Arab upheavals/revolts on restructuring the process of political reform — as well as opposition in the kingdom in the post‐2011 era — will be explored with reference to the changing dynamics of Islamist opposition.