The Politics of Possession The Politics of Possession: Property, Authority and Access to Natural Resources Edited by T. Sikor and C. Lund © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19656-7 Development and ChangeBook Series As a journal, Development and Changedistinguishes itself by its multi- disciplinary approach and its breadth of coverage, publishing articles on a wide spectrum of development issues. Accommodating a deeper analysis and a more concentrated focus, it also publishes regular special issues on selected themes. Development and Changeand Wiley-Blackwell collaborate to produce these theme issues as a series of books, with the aim of bringing these pertinent resources to a wider audience. Titles in the series include: Gender Myths and Feminist Fables: The Struggle for Interpretive Power in Gender and Development Edited by Andrea Cornwall, Elizabeth Harrison and Ann Whitehead Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa Edited by Christian Lund China’s Limits to Growth: Greening State and Society Edited by Peter Ho and Eduard B. Vermeer Catalysing Development? A Debate on Aid Jan Pronk et al. State Failure, Collapse and Reconstruction Edited by Jennifer Milliken Forests: Nature, People, Power Edited by Martin Doornbos, Ashwani Saith and Ben White Gendered Poverty and Well-being Edited by Shahra Razavi Globalization and Identity Edited by Birgit Meyer and Peter Geschiere Social Futures, Global Visions Edited by Cynthia Hewitt de Alcantara The Politics of Possession Property, Authority and Access to Natural Resources Edited by Thomas Sikor and Christian Lund This edition first published 2009 Originally published as Volume 40, Issue 1 of Development and Change Chapters © 2009 The Institute of Social Studies Book compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing programme has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell. 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If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The politics of possession : property, authority and access to natural resources / edited by Thomas Sikor and Christian Lund. p. cm. – (Development and change book series) “Originally published as Volume 40, Issue 1 of Development and Change.” Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-9656-7 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Natural resources–Political aspects. 2. Right of property. I. Sikor, Thomas. II. Lund, Christian. HC85.P65 2009 333.3–dc22 2009036497 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Set in 10pt Times by Aptara Printed in Malaysia 01 2009 Contents Notes on Contributors vii 1 Access and Property:A Question of Power and Authority Thomas Sikor and Christian Lund 1 2 Property,Authority and Citizenship:Land Claims,Politics and the Dynamics of Social Division in West Africa Sara Berry 23 3 Rubber Erasures,Rubber Producing Rights:Making Racialized Territories in West Kalimantan,Indonesia Nancy Lee Peluso 46 4 Ruling by Record:The Meaning of Rights,Rules and Registration in an Andean Comunidad Monique Nuijten and David Lorenzo 79 5 Authority over Forests:Empowerment and Subordination in Senegal’s Democratic Decentralization Jesse C. Ribot 101 6 Recategorizing ‘Public’and ‘Private’Property in Ghana Christian Lund 125 7 Land Access and Titling in Nicaragua Rikke B. Broegaard 142 8 Negotiating Post-Socialist Property andState:Struggles over Forests in Albania and Romania Thomas Sikor,Johannes Stahl and Stefan Dorondel 162 9 Property and Authority in a Migrant Society:Balinese Irrigators in Sulawesi,Indonesia Dik Roth 184 Index 207 Notes on Contributors Sara Berryis Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, specializing in twentieth-century African social and eco- nomic history and development studies, with particular emphasis on West Africa. Rikke B. Broegaard is a project researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark, with a PhD in International Development Studies from Roskilde University. Her current research inter- ests include inequality and access to natural resources, land tenure security and land markets. Stefan Dorondel holds a PhD from Humboldt University, Berlin. He is a researcher at the Francisc I. Rainer Institute of Anthropology, Bucharest, Romania. David Lorenzois a PhD candidate at Roskilde University, Denmark. He has conducted research in Mexico and Peru on communal land tenure institu- tions. His PhD research in Andean communities focuses on a variety of top- ics that shed light on processes of territorialization in stateless places. Christian Lund is Professor in International Development Studies at Roskilde University, Denmark. His most recent works include Local Politics and the Dynamics of Property in Africa (CUP, 2008) and Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa (Blackwell, 2007). Monique Nuijten is Associate Professor at Wageningen University. She is author of the book Power, Community and the State: The Political Anthropology of Organisation in Mexico (Pluto Press, 2003), editor of the book Corruption and the Secret of Law: A Legal Anthropological Perspective (Ashgate, 2007) and author of numerous articles on communal land tenure and state-peasant relations. Nancy Lee Peluso is Professor and Chair of the Division of Society and Environment, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California at Berkeley, USA. Her research is on forest and agrarian politics in Java and West Kalimantan, Indonesia, focus- ing on property, resource access and political ecology. Jesse C.Ribotis an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA. He was previously a Senior Associate at the World Resources Institute in Washington, DC. He conducts research on decentralization; resource tenure and access; natural resource commodity chains; and household vulnerability in the face of climate and environmental change. viii Dik Rothis a social anthropologist and Assistant Professor in the Law and Governance Group of Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands. Among his research interests are socio-legal studies and anthropology of law, natural resources governance and management, and development policy. He has published, among others, on the politics of regional autonomy in Indonesia, the role of legal complexity in land and water rights, and flood policy in The Netherlands. Thomas Sikor is Reader in Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. His research examines resource property, governance and institutions with a geographical interest in post-socialist countries, including empirical studies in Albania, Romania and Vietnam. Johannes Stahl is a Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California at Berkeley, USA. His research focuses on human-environ- mental relations in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. 1 Access and Property: A Question of Power and Authority ThomasSikorandChristianLund INTRODUCTION:THEARGUMENT Aslargerpoliticaleconomicforcestransformruralresourcesofmaterialor culturalvalue,accesstotheseresourcesisoftencontestedandrifewithcon- flictatmanylevelssimultaneously.Insocietiescharacterizedbynormative andlegalpluralismsuchaspost-colonialandpost-socialistcountries,thisis particularlyevident.Thecentraldynamiciscreatedbypeople’sattemptsto secure rights to natural resources by having their access claims recognized aslegitimatepropertybyapolitico-legalinstitution.Theprocessofrecogni- tionofclaimsaspropertysimultaneouslyworkstoimbuetheinstitutionthat providessuchrecognitionwiththerecognitionofitsauthoritytodoso.This isthe‘contract’thatlinkspropertyandauthority.Propertyisonlyproperty if socially legitimate institutions sanction it, and politico-legal institutions are only effectively legitimized if their interpretation of social norms (in this case property rights) is heeded (Lund, 2002). The process of seeking authorization for property claims also works to authorize the authorizers and,atthesametime,institutionsunderpinningvariousclaimsofaccess— hencecateringforparticularconstituencies—underminerivalclaimstothe sameresources. Nevertheless, property is part of a larger picture of access to resources, whetherlegallyrecognizedornot.Whilenotallformsofaccesstoresources ortheirbenefitsareguaranteedbyapolitico-legalinstitution,theymaystill constitute an important element in people’s livelihoods. Indeed, the ‘grey zone’betweenwhatpeoplehaverightstoandwhattheymerelyhaveaccess to is terrain worth exploring. In parallel to this, politico-legal authority is only part of a larger picture of power, whether legitimate or not. Not all forms of power to decide who gets access to what resources and benefits, andonwhatterms,arelegitimizedwithequaleffect.Nonetheless,powerful groups and institutional coalitions may still exercise what are essentially political decisions about people’s access to resources and benefits. This second‘greyzone’betweenauthorityandpower—thatis,successfullyand Thechaptersinthisvolumeoriginatefromaresearchertrainingworkshopjointlyorganizedby theJuniorResearchGrouponPostsocialistLandRelations,HumboldtUniversityBerlin,and theGraduateSchoolofInternationalDevelopmentStudies,RoskildeUniversity,inlate2006. Funding for the workshop was provided by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Roskilde University.WethankSaraBerry,AnneLarsonandthreeanonymousreviewersfortheircon- structivecommentsonthisintroductoryessay.Thisessayhasalsobenefitedfromverystimulating discussionswiththeworkshopparticipantsandcontributorstothisvolume. The Politics of Possession: Property, Authority and Access to Natural Resources Edited by T. Sikor and C. Lund © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19656-7 2 ThomasSikorandChristianLund less-successfully legitimized decisions about how resources are distributed insociety—isequallyworthinvestigating.Thesetwosetsofrelationships, their interconnections and recursive constitution form the object of this chapter. Twoissuesarethereforesimultaneouslyatstake:strugglesoverproperty are as much about the scope and constitution of authority as about access toresources.Toinvestigatehowcompetitionforsociety’svitalresourcesis organizedandstructuredistoinvestigatenotonlyhowwealthisdistributed and how classes of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ are made; it is equally to in- vestigatehowpolitiesemerge,consolidateandrecedethroughprocessesof legitimization, inclusion, exclusion and violence. The social, political and institutionallandscapeisamorphousatcloseinspection,however(Cleaver, 2002; Douglas, 1986). Nuijten uses a very suggestive conceptualization of a force field to refer to a wider set of diverse powers: ‘In a force field cer- tainformsofdominance,contentionandresistancemaydevelop,aswellas certainregularitiesandformsofordering.Inthisview,thepatterningofor- ganizingpracticesisnottheresultofacommonunderstandingornormative agreement, but the forces at play within the field’ (Nuijten, 2003: 12). Our argumentisthatwithinsuchaforcefield,organizingpracticesthatconcern thedistributionofresourcesareparticularlyinteresting. This introduction and the chapters that follow in this collection venture tomakeaparticularincisionintotherecursiveconstitutionofpropertyand institutionalauthority.Byinvestigatingbothsuccessfulandfailedprocesses oflegitimationofaccessasproperty,andprocessesoflegitimationofpower as authority, we develop a novel interpretation of the distinction between accessandproperty.Wearguethatissuesofaccessandpropertyarejoinedto questionsofpowerandauthority.Peopleattempttoconsolidatetheirclaims to land and other resources in various ways, often in pursuit of turning theiraccesstoresourcesintorecognizedproperty.Inourargumentwebring together two perspectives on resource use that often remain separated, and whichhaveproducedtwostrandsintheliterature—oneonbroaderaccess– powerrelations(suchasBerry,1993;RibotandPeluso,2003)andanother onthenarrowerproperty–authorityrelations(includingLund,2002,2007). In the process, we hope to clear up some of the dynamics generating the ambiguity of property observed in post-colonial and post-socialist settings (cf.Berry,1993;Verdery,1996). Moreover,byinvestigatinghowinstitutionalauthorityandpropertyrights are recursively constituted, we are also investigating governance and state formation processes. The political dynamics of property are the processes whereby rights over land and other natural resources are settled and con- tested.Theyarefundamentaltohowauthorityisestablishedandchallenged among competing politico-legal institutions, thereby allowing the study of property dynamics to facilitate special insights into everyday processes of stateformation.Theinstitutionalcontestants’pursuitofcontrolovernatural resources involves them, unavoidably, in the competition for authority, its AccessandProperty 3 consolidation,reconfigurationanderosion.Thisisnotnecessarilydonewith the intention of state formation at the local level; it is done to check and overcometheircompetitorsandbenefitfromtheadvantagesofpower.The result is nonetheless, in part, institutional (see Lund, 2008: 3; Tilly, 1985). Recentyearshaveseentheemergenceofarichliteratureonstateformation inpost-colonialcontexts.1 Characteristicofthis—admittedlyverydiverse — work is an interest in the almost forensic analysis of political processes thatmakeupstate,legitimacyandauthority.Thekeywordisprocess. This introductory essay seeks to position our argument in relation to the literature and the contributions to this volume. Considering the wealth of research in the two fields, the discussion of the literature is necessarily somewhateclecticandmayappearoverlysimplisticattimes.Yetweintend tosketchoutthecontoursofthelarger,theoreticalargumentpursuedinthe chaptersthatfollow.Theessaybeginsbydiscussingthedifferencebetween access and property and subsequently looks at legitimacy and legitimizing practices. We then proceed to establish the mutually-constitutive character ofpropertyandauthority,aslegitimacytravelsbackandforthbetweenthe two. As a next step, we look into the dynamics of power and authority to examinetheroleofpropertyinthemakingandunmakingofauthority.We then return to our interest in the dynamics of access and property, on the one hand, and power and authority, on the other, identifying territoriality as a particularly interesting notion and examining the use of violence in institutions’legitimizingpractices.Wefinishwithsynthesesofthechapters inthisvolume,relatingthemtothediscussioninthisintroductoryessay,and somebriefconcludingremarks. PROPERTYANDACCESS:APARTIALOVERLAP Most simply put, property is about relationships among social actors with regard to objects of value (von Benda-Beckmann et al., 2006). Property relations involve different kinds of social actors, including individuals and collectivities.Theactorsarelinkedtoeachotherinsocialrelationships,and property takes the form of ‘enforceable claim[s] to some use or benefit of something’ (MacPherson, 1978: 3). Property relations exist at the level of lawsandregulations,culturalnormsandsocialvalues,actualsocialrelation- ships,andpropertypractices.Propertyisthereforelegitimizedclaims,inthe sensethatthestateorsomeotherformofpolitico-legalauthoritysanctions them. 1. Thelistislong,butincludesBoone(2003);ComaroffandComaroff(1999);Corbridgeetal. (2005);DasandPoole(2004);GuptaandFerguson(1997);HansenandStepputat(2001, 2005);Lund(2007);Migdal(2001);Nuijten(2003);Sivaramakrishnan(1999);Steinmetz (1999);Sturgeon(2005).