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What
is land tenure?
Think
of land tenure as a set of rights, in this case, to land. We're mainly
interested in agriculture and the use of natural resources in this
class, and the ways in which women's access to these is limited by
the system of land tenure. Land could be considered on type of property,
and some refer to these issues under the broader umbrella of property
rights. There are a few basic categories of property types:
- Private--private property
rights generally are more exclusive--they define who the owners
of property are, what the property is, and what rights the owners
have. In the U.S. private property is a fundamental part of the
economic system--for instance, if farmers want to invest in their
land, they can go to the bank, ask for a loan, put up part of
their property as collateral, etc., because they have title
to the land (in reality, some lending institution probably has
title . . . ).
- Public--In the Western
U.S., much of the land is 'publicly owned.' For instance, US Forest
Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service--these
are the agencies that manage the land. The taxpayers in theory
'own' it, but it doesn't prevent the Bush Administration from
continuing to promote expanded oil and gas drilling, despite widespread
public opposition. Cities, states, boroughs, etc., can all be
public land managers also.
- Common property--Common
property is, in a sense, private property with multiple owners.
It is common in Africa, where rights to use land are often granted
to members of a community, or of a clan/lineage/household. Fisheries
are common property resources, too--difficult to claim ownership
over fish. The key to understanding common property is that its
use takes away from the resource base. For instance, if you go
to the library to borrow a book, the rules require you return
that book for use by others. If you're a commercial fisher off
the coast of Maine, the fish you catch aren't available to other
potential users. See the difference (the former is called a 'public
good')?
- Open access--open
access is where no one has clear rights. In the case of fisheries,
it likely leads to overfishing the resource. In the case of grazing
lands, to overgrazing. Open access occurs where there are no rules
governing access. Can you think of any examples here on campus
where resources available to all are abused/overused [think napster
...]? Common property resources, where there are rules, can also
be overused, if there are not mechanisms to enforce the rules
(e.g., littering in the park, smoking in a non-smoking area [what
would be the resource here?]). Access to fuelwood is often open--women
can't keep others from harvesting it, for instance to sell in
a nearby market for cash.
In very general terms, in
Africa, Common property and open access are prevalent (the states usually
claim all lands, but may not enforce these claims over local claims).
In Asia, private property and common property are more prevalent--in
many areas there are landlord/tenant relationships (in other words,
the landlord leases land to tenants to farm, who owe something in return--part
of their crop, money rent, etc.), along with common property systems,
especially where irrigation takes place. Imagine the sorts of rules
that running a system of irrigation canals, from the top to the bottom
of a watershed,
might entail. In Latin America, the (very) general tenure type involves
many landless or small area landowners (minifundio), and a few
wealthy landowners (latifundio). For instance, government puts
in a road through a tropical forest, perhaps to ease stress on urban
areas and encourage colonization, agriculture. Colonists, homesteaders,
or squatters (illegally settling) clear patches for farming. Because
most of the nutrients are in the vegetation, when they're cut for agriculture,
good yields will last only a few years without replacing the nutrients.
The colonizers move on down the road; wealthy ranchers may move in,
take over the abandoned clearings, and consolidate and claim the land
for ranching.
Remember that the roles women
play in agriculture are different in these three settings as well. From
your study of statistical tables, where are the poorest countries in
the world? What do you know about women's roles in agriculture?
Rights
Land tenure can be thought
of as a 'bundle' of rights. Think of a bundle of wood, each stick representing
some right. These rights include use of land or a resource, control
over its use (remember--women can use fuelwood, but can't really control
who else uses it, making it . . . what kind of property type?), transfer
(the right to inherit or bequeath, pledge, loan, lease--what is sharecropping?);
alienate (the right to sell); disposal (of resources--what
does this mean?); Adjudicate (the right to settle disputes,
be involved in dispute settlement); eviction (the right to exclude,
kick off users--think of slumlords and apartment tenants... ). Women's
bundles of rights are usually much smaller than men's, and may only
include use rights. In addition, women have less security of
tenure--that means they're more liable to be evicted, excluded from
use, or find others clearing land they were farming or using resources
they depend on.
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Concepts
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Customary
versus Statutory tenure. Statutory tenure is formal, legal tenure.
Most societies have laws about property rights. However, most societies
also have customs about use of property that may be shared and acknowledged.
Customary tenure is extremely important in Africa. It is passed
on from one generation to the next, and likely to change over time
(can you think of why it might change? how might the distinction
between statutory and customary tenure affect women?);
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Tenure
security (protection from eviction; right to exclude others
from use);
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Title
(is this customary or statutory?); In what ways might women be disadvantaged
in terms of applying for official legal title to land?
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Niche
(in the landscape, specific plant species . . . ); while women
may be able to identify niches in the landscape they can gain rights
to (for instance, borders to fields, areas around the back of huts),
what is the likelihood of these niches containing or being able
to produce high-value resources? Security becomes very important--once
they do turn something into resources of value, do they risk eviction?.
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A
right versus a duty versus a privilege (rights for some imply
duties for others--e.g., the right to own and operate farm property
may imply others' duty to respect that right within social bounds;
however, if a farmer decides to build a 150-acre hog factory, others'
rights to reap benefits from their property may imply his/her duty
to refrain from fouling the water and air);
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Patriarchy
(authority); Patrilineage (descent, inheritance); Patrilocality
(residence)
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Common
property and free riding--Free riding is, for example, the person
who's swapping MP3 files on the Penn State Network, using up 20%
of the network's bandwidth (or speed). Can you think of how free
riding might work in a small group project in a class? How might
free riding disproportionately affect women and their use of resources
and land?
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land
use and tenure--a change in land use can lead to a change in
rights--try to think this one through and figure out why, and how
it might affect women.
Resource
Tenure
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In many
cases rights to resources and rights to the land they're on belong
to different people. For instance, in the image below, there are
several kinds of land uses: for residence, meeting places (e.g.,
under the shade tree), fields directly behind family compounds (the
sokofeforow), fields that alternate from being farmed to
recovering from a farming rotation (bush fallow lands), forestland
(forestland commons in the image), and low-lying areas where
moisture from rainy season storms evaporates more slowly (the draw
areas). Other land uses might include a sacred forest (where religious
rituals might take place), a cemetery, perhaps a woodlot, or a livestock
corridor (where grazing cattle are supposed to stay during the rainy
season to avoid crop damage), each with its own sets of users and
tenure rights holders.
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Women's
access to land is often through their husbands, especially where inheritance
is patrilineal, marriage is virilocal and residence
patterns are patrilocal (see a good glossary
of kinship terms).
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Agroforestry--Landscapes
vary, and plant species vary, and many agricultural societies practice
agroforestry--a combination of field crops, shrubs, bushes, even
tree species, on the same land--taking advantage of vertical space.
Add to this herds of cattle or other livestock (goats, sheep), and
you can begin to see the complexity of their land use systems. This
is quite different from the typical American agricultural landscape
of treeless field crops, and it can complicate land and resource
tenure. In some cases, though, women benefit--they may not have
security of land tenure, but they may have rights to use resources
on the land (e.g., collecting fuelwood used for cooking, tree fruit,
medicinal plants, fodder for any small livestock they might own
. . . food, fuel and fodder are generally the
three most common uses made of forest products by women. To see
a brief description of agroforestry (which will give you an idea
of how resources and land might have different sets of rights),
visit this agroforestry
link
For more
information on tenure see John Bruce's article on the Land
Tenure Center Web page (open the pdf
file--you'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader).
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