CODESRIA Multinational Working Groups: Call for Proposals, 10/04

CODESRIA Multinational Working Groups

Call for Proposals

Theme: Land in the Struggles for Citizenship, Democracy and Development in Africa

Introductory Background

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites proposals from researchers for possible inclusion in its new multinational working group (MWG) on the theme of Land in the Struggles for Citizenship, Democracy and Development in Africa. The changing political economy of land in Africa is one of the twelve thematic areas at the core of the current intellectual agenda of the Council. The MWG is the flagship research vehicle employed by CODESRIA for the promotion of multi-country and multidisciplinary reflection on critical questions of concern to the African social research community. Each MWG is led by two to three coordinators and includes a maximum of fifteen researchers. Three senior scholars are designated as independent reviewers who serve as discussants during the meetings of the group. The lifespan of the average MWG is two years during which time all aspects of the research process are expected to be completed and the final results prepared for publication in the CODESRIA Book Series. More details on the MWG and CODESRIA activities are available on the Council's website: www.codesria.org

The Changing Political Economy of Land in Africa

Recent debates over the nature and relevance of the Land Question in the current context of globalisation, market liberalisation and growing bio-technological substitutionism in agriculture have tended to suggest that the "classic" land and agrarian questions as we once knew them have been overtaken by events. This viewpoint is based on the perceived erosion of the socio-economic foundations of the peasantry and the supposedly limited capacity of the rural poor to wage struggles for radical land redistribution. Yet, there is mounting evidence, particularly from Africa and Latin America, that the prediction of the demise of the classic land and agrarian questions might be premature. In many parts of the developing world, from Chiapas in Mexico to Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, there is a re-emergence of open and silent struggles over land whose tone and tenor belie suggestions that the Land Question is over and challenge the market-led land reforms that have resulted in the widespread marginalisation of the working poor, including the peasantry. New political alliances are being forged around land issues and social movements focusing on land reform are growing in numbers and ambition. Clearly, far from disappearing into oblivion, the Land Question, it would seem, is being reconstituted and posed in a new light, with such issues as citizenship, tenure and property rights being brought into the heart of the debate.

To argue that the Land Question is alive and well is one thing. To develop a comprehensive framework within which to study it is, however, a different matter altogether. An earlier body of literature produced on the Land Question treated it essentially as a sub-element of the Agrarian Question with the implication that most of the pioneering attempts to grapple with the former involved a simultaneous engagement with the latter. This is an approach which still has some validity, although the Land Question as it is posed today in Africa has many other dimensions which require to be researched and integrated into analyses. In any case, the African land and agrarian questions have always had specific historical dimensions that set them apart from their global incidence, and whose contemporary expression have not been adequately captured by the plethora of "new wave" land studies that have been produced. In coming to grips with these specificities, it will be important to address the perspective which argues, inter alia, that in the absence of a history of extensive land expropriation, and in view of the highly limited processes of proletarianisation of labour that occurred, Africa did not really face a classic Land Question or even a classic Agrarian Question, except perhaps in the former settler colonies (Algeria, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, etc). And yet, both in its classical sense, and in its contemporary manifestations, it would seem clear that there is growing pressure on land resources as shown by the proliferation of slums and the attendant inadequacies of infrastructure. Some of these land pressures are directly connected with the accelerated processes of urbanization unfolding across Africa.

Furthermore, because rapid rural to urban migration continues to be an important feature of the African landscape, and since non-agricultural employment prospects have been slow to develop, it is clear that a growing number of households will continue to depend for their social reproduction on their capacity to enjoy an adequate access to land. However, the inadequacy of access to and control of land by the majority of households that are directly dependent on land and natural resources for their reproduction has resulted in the expansion of the population of Africa's marginalized peasants and working poor. The resultant conflicts over land rights have served to underscore the neglect of social justice and equity issues in African resource management at a time when the continent's quest for socio-economic and political reform is increasingly governed by neo-liberal doctrines of development. The growth of resource conflicts focused on land also reflects contradictions that are steeped both in the legacies of colonialism and contemporary struggles over "development" and accumulation under global capitalism, and popular demands for democratisation. These contradictions question the capacity of neo-liberal regimes to deliver land reforms that address inequity and poverty. The conceptual content and meaning of the land and agrarian questions under neo-liberal political and economic conditions are thus much more extensive, encompassing classical concerns and new ones. It is an area that is fertile with possibilities for scholarly research.

Internal and intra-regional migrations, such as those involving the flow of Sahelian populations into richer agricultural regions, coupled with involuntary settlements and changes in land use over the last century, have produced dramatic inequalities in land ownership/control. They have also generated conflicts on more localized and regionalized scales than ever before. A defining feature of Africa's contemporary Land Question, is clearly, the growing struggles for access to and the secure use of land, as well as the proliferation of efforts to reclaim alienated land rights. These struggles are likely to have a profound impact on the continent's economic development and political stability. This is all the more so as the contestations have escalated in the wider context of struggles over the land rights "embedded" in the extensive mineral and other natural resources that are of exchange value to global tourism, forestry and bio-technology markets and which are rapidly being concessioned by governments and the local elite into external control. Civil wars, inter-country conflicts, migration and involuntary displacements are all symptomatic of increasing land conflicts involving direct confrontation over access to key natural resources by both domestic and external forces. The wars in the Great Lakes region and the recent civil war in Côte d'Ivoire are but a few examples.

The dominance of external financial and development institutions in Africa's policy making processes and local markets has also contributed to fuelling the land conflicts that have emerged. The pressures mounted by these institutions for the commodification of land, including the conversion of customary land tenures into tradable instruments reflect both strong external interests in land and resource control, and increasing internal demands for primitive accumulation through land by an African indigenous capitalist class which includes a sizable and growing agrarian bourgeoisie that is aligned in many cases to external "investors" or new external settlers. Property rights and tenure regimes based on collective notions of ownership and control have, therefore, come under attack in the environment of all-round liberalisation integral to IMF/World structural adjustment. Land titling as an individualising process that supposedly allows for easier access to agricultural credit and the expansion of the land market has been favoured as the preferred policy direction for Africa even if it is founded on a weak conceptual premise and flies in the face of communal property rights. The various processes of commodification that have occurred have generated growing conflicts over land allocation and use across many social and material cleavages, particularly the more generic dimensions of class, gender, nationality, ethnicity, and race.

Furthermore, Africa's Land Question has tended to be problematised mainly from the perspective of the importance of land for its ailing agricultural sector. The lack of an agrarian transition based on technological modernisation and an agro-industrial articulation has been treated as a key factor in Africa's Land Question. In terms of the agrarian basis of the Land Question, it is notable that the extent of developed arable and irrigable land available for agriculture on the continent is indeed limited, in spite of the continent's large size. Pressures on land arising from demographic growth alone, have led to dramatic land scarcities, in spite of the incidence of land use intensification in a number of countries and specific regions. The extensive degradation of fragile land resources and the increasing control by the elite of extensive prime lands under conditions of land scarcity all combine to broaden the uneven distribution of land and the resultant contradictions arising from constrained social and technical relations of production. Given the importance of the rural land sector to the goal of attaining food security and reducing poverty, there is a recognition that a vibrant agricultural and rural sector underpinned by a balanced access to land resources is critical to the achievement of an agrarian transition and, more importantly, improving living standards. However, control over land is perhaps most visible in the more "conflicted" struggles over the natural resources that are embedded in land, emphasizing the importance of interrogating the Land Question not only as an agrarian-based question but also as a multi-faceted problem reflected in the one-sided domination and unequal control of industries such as tourism, mining, and forestry by a minority group of local and external capitalist interests.

A fuller understanding of the changing social and political forces behind the demand for land in Africa requires a renewed research effort to uncover the shifts occurring in land-related conflicts and the associated questions that have arisen and which range from invasions, squatting, emerging class/ethnic/racial dynamics, and changing gender relations to the plethora of political and ideological contestations that have mushroomed, including the role played by social movements interested in driving reforms in one direction or another. Such a research effort will benefit from a comparative, continent-wide approach that has been sorely lacking. The assessment that is required of the evolution of the Land Question and the class dynamics and social movements surrounding land and agrarian issues should also necessarily be grounded upon an understanding of the political and economic context in which the peasantry, agrarian capitalists and external market influences function in shaping the Land Question in the different regions of Africa. Such a contextualisation could provide a useful step in contributing to an improved understanding of Africa's contemporary Land Question.

Finally, land rights are at the heart of on-going struggles over citizenship and democracy, and are key issues in the re-negotiation of national belonging and the redefinition of the social and geographical boundaries of communities. Studies on the place of land as an identity marker, and therefore in what makes or unmakes cohesive communities, and in the struggles for democracy could help in deepening and refining our understanding of struggles over citizenship. Moreover, access to land and land rights for immigrants are at the heart of contestations over identities, belonging and citizenship, as we see in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the case of the Banyamulengés, for instance), Côte d'Ivoire and elsewhere. Indigeneity implies rights of access to land, among other things. Yet, as the literature on citizenship and autochthony amply shows, the question of when immigrants become indigenes or citizens is still acutely posed in many areas. Cases of unemployed urban youth of rural ancestry returning to the villages of their ancestors with claims over land previously ceded to immigrants, or descendants of immigrants, are numerous. All this makes the Land Question more complex under the current conditions of economic, social and political crises that exist across Africa.

Proposed Thematic Areas for Research Focus

The CODESRIA MWG on the changing political economy of land is intended to contribute towards enhancing our understanding of the key issues which underlie the contemporary Land Question in Africa. The MWG is being established on the assumption that the Land Question is also an identity, a 'citizenship' and a rights question, based upon the escalating problems of inequitable land distribution, insecure tenure, the shaky and exclusive bases on which belonging and citizenship are determined, inappropriate land use tendencies, and ineffective systems of land management. In spite of the growth of research on the Land Question, there is a tendency for the dominant discourses to focus on selected discrete aspects of the land issue such as land tenure, and to a lesser degree, on a narrow view of land use, to the neglect of the land distribution and social movement aspects that are central to on-going struggles. Our understanding of the wider political economy and social relations of the Land Question is thus unnecessarily restricted. Much of the research agendas that have been promoted on the land issue have been inspired by or predicated on structural adjustment-type macro-economic policy reforms driven by the goal of "getting the prices right" for the pursuit of new export markets through policies derived from market-based property rights.

Also, little attention has been paid in the literature to the class, gender, regional and racial alliances which underlie land problems and the broader, interconnected political and policy conflicts which they generate. Moreover, very few African scholars have attempted to theorise the land question in the wider context of agrarian reform, democratisation and capitalist transformation. The major theoretical and methodological problem in the literature on land is cast in terms of the rectification of the land tenure security needs of idealised "communities" and surplus producers conceptualised as interest groups. Much of the research tends to rely on a superficial analysis of domestic social classes, the forces underlying the formation of these communities, and emergent agrarian interest groups, without, on the one hand, examining their organic character and contradictory relations with the state, and, on the other hand, their relations with the peasantry especially as it pertains to growing land concentration. More critically, empirical evidence on the extent and ways in which land distribution, tenure relations, land markets, and land use patterns are changing rapidly in Africa has yet to be systematically documented. To do this would require many country studies, some based on long-term field observation. A veritable research agenda on Africa's Land Question could make a difference in redressing the lacunae and parochialism found in the literature by seeking to combine an African historical understanding of the Land Question and the agrarian transition since colonial times with investigations of the wide range of specific contemporary manifestations of the Land Question as evidenced by the issues of distribution, tenure and markets and, utilisation. It could also seek to explain the under-lying socio-political and economic processes and institutions which shape these land issues.

The research effort that is called for requires the definition of broad but interrelated thematic areas that allow for the treatment of the historical and contemporary dimensions of the Land Question, the institutions and state-civil society relations which surround it, and the internal--external market dynamics which govern all these processes. Because gender relations in land are under-rated, this aspect would require both special focus and cross-cutting treatments among various thematic areas. Furthermore, specific land problems peculiar to individual countries need to be catered for. The following research areas are among the possible ones that will be covered by the MWG:

1. Historical Transitions in Land and Agrarian Relations in Africa,
   
   
2. Theoretical/Methodological Issues in the Contemporary African Land Question,
   
   
3. Distributive Pressures and Re-distributive Reforms in the African Land Question,
   
   
4. State-Civil Society Relations and Land Management Institutions,
   
   
5. The Land Question and Political Violence,
   
   
6. Gender Relations, Access to Land and Security of Tenure,
   
   
7. Autochthony, Land Tenure, Property Rights, and Citizenship,
   
   
8. The Dynamics of Commodification and Emerging New Land Markets,
   
   
9. New Land Movements and their Politics
   
   
10. Land Use and Extraverted Accumulation Processes
    
    
11. International Markets, Foreign Capital and Development Aid in the African Land Question
    
    
12. Race, Rights and Justice in the Land Question
    
    
13. Emerging Urban Land Questions/Changing Rural Land Dynamics
    
    
14. Comparative Perspectives on the Land Question from Asia and Latin America.
    
    
    
    

CODESRIA invites proposals for research on any one of the issues raised above, or on related questions not explicitly identified in this announcement but germane to the theme either regionally or in specific national or sub-regional contexts. The authors of proposals selected will be invited to be part of the CODESRIA MWG that is to be established. Proposals for consideration for inclusion in the MWG should comprise:

1. A clear statement of the purpose of the project and the problematic to be researched;
   
   
2. A thorough review of the literature on the sub- theme selected;
   
   
3. A description of the research methodology to be used;
   
   
4. A detailed work plan;
   
   
5. A draft budget;
   
   
6. The Curriculum vitae of the author(s).
   
   
   

All proposals must be received by 30 September 2004. Proposals submitted will go through an evaluation process the results of which will be made available by 31 October 2004. The selected applicants will be invited to participate in a launch/methodological workshop to be held in November 2004. Proposals should be sent to:

The CODESRIA MWG on Land,
Research Department
CODESRIA,

Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop x Canal IV
P.O. Box 3304, Dakar, 18524
Senegal. Tel : +221 825 9822/8259823

Fax: +221 824 12 89/825 66 51
Email: mwg@codesria.sn - Website: www.codesria.org

Page Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D.