Reasserting the commons

Pastoral contestations of private and state lands in East Africa

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12960010
AutoresJ G Galaty (0000-0002-4150-8092, McGill University, autor correspondente)
Ano2016
Volume10
Fascículo2
Páginas709-709
Data de publicação2016-09-30
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInternational Journal of the Commons (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1875-0281 • E-ISSN: 1875-0281
EditoraUbiquity Press, Ltd. (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.18352/ijc.720
OpenAlexW2527753966
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas25

The theory that land holding is inexorably evolving from common to private or state tenure is challenged by facts on the ground that this paper will examine. ‘Tenure’ is interpreted both in terms of formal law and informal practices. While the association between privatization and land fragmentation is clear, property theory has influenced privatization so the process cannot be used to validate the evolutionary model of transitions from open access to common property to private property. Although in many settings common and state property has given way to privatization, in other cases private or state property has reverted to common holdings. A dynamic tenure model would demonstrate the conditions under which tenure transitions occur between common, private and state property, as the balance between transaction and exclusion costs shifts, or when the boundaries of tenure forms weaken to allow open access to occur. Examining three scenes of tenure transitions involving Kenyan pastoralists (Laikipia County, the Rift Valley, Narok County and Kajiado County), this paper examines cases in which transaction and exclusion dynamics – which are metaphors for the institutional effects of social and territorial relations- lead to changing land-use practices and tenure transitions. In semi-arid pastoral regions, we find more fluid systems of tenure than the inexorable spread of privatization through formalized land rights and increasing land fragmentation would have suggested should occur in the 21st century

Agriculture · Business · Common-pool resource · Commons · Economics · Geography · Kenya · Land law · Land tenure · Market economy · Pastoralism · Political economy · Political science · Private property · Property rights · Public property · State (computer science · State ownership · Transaction cost · Animal Diversity and Health Studies · Land Rights and Reforms · Law · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology · Finance