Power / Knowledge / Land

Contested Ontologies of Land and Its Governance in Africa
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-0-472-07533-1
Verlag: University of Michigan Press

Buch, Englisch, 344 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: African Perspectives

The 2008 outcry over the “global land grab” made headlines around the world, and has led to sustained interest among both academics and the international development establishment. In Power/Knowledge/Land, author Laura German profiles the consolidation of a global knowledge regime surrounding land and its governance within international development circles following the outcry over “global land grabs,” and the growing enrollment of previously antagonistic actors within it. Drawing theoretical insights from ontological anthropology and decolonial theory and deploying pioneering analytical techniques inspired by the politics of knowledge, German reveals the inner mechanics of a global knowledge regime that has enabled the longstanding project of commodifying customary land to be advanced by capturing the energies of socially progressive forces. By bringing theories of change from the emergent land governance orthodoxy into dialogue with the ethnographic evidence from across the African continent and beyond, concepts masquerading as universal and self-evident truths are provincialized, and their role in commodifying customary land and entrenching colonial futurities put on display. In doing so, the volume brings wider academic debates surrounding productive forms of power into the heart of the land grab debate, while enhancing their accessibility to a wider audience.

Power/Knowledge/Land takes current scholarly debates surrounding land grabs beyond their theoretical moorings in critical agrarian studies, political economy and globalization into contemporary debates surrounding the politics of knowledge—from decolonial theory to ontological anthropology, thereby enabling new dynamics of the phenomenon to be revealed. German also takes a deep look at global knowledge brokers and dynamics in international development, complementing a large body of scholarship on the political economy of land grabs and their situated agrarian dynamics. The book deploys a pioneering epistemology integrating deconstructionist tools of discourse analysis with comparative study and systematic qualitative reviews to hold dominant knowledge and truth claims surrounding theories of change in international development circles against the ethnographic evidence—from situated property relations and ontologies of land, to the impacts of land governance interventions. This helps to reveal the Western and modernist biases in the narratives that have been advanced about women, custom, and security, revealing how the coloniality of knowledge underpins political economies of land.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Rechtswissenschaften Bürgerliches Recht Sachenrecht Grundstücks- und Immobilienrecht, Immobiliarsachenrecht, Nachbarrecht
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Entwicklungsstudien
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Entwicklungspolitik, Nord-Süd Beziehungen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I – Emergence of a Global Knowledge Regime
- Chapter 1. Discursive Transformation
- Chapter 2. Enrollment
- PART II – Decentering Emergent Truths
- Chapter 3. Women’s Tenure Security and the False Promise of Titling
- Chapter 4. Collective Titling and Community Consultation
- Chapter 5. Contested Ontologies of Security
- Chapter 6. The Strategic Importance of “Inclusive Business” to Land Governance
- PART III – Prospering in Place
- Chapter 7. Re-Thinking Land and Rural Futures

Über Autor(innen)

Laura German is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia.