IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gig/afjour/v44y2009i2p29-52.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social Research and Development Policy: Two Approaches to West African Land-tenure Problems

Author

Listed:
  • Volker Stamm

Abstract

This article analyses the extent to which the concepts underlying land policies in West Africa that prevail amongst the development organisations most active in this field correspond to the results of the intense debate on the same subject over the last three decades, which has involved almost all branches of the social sciences: ethnology, legal anthropology, sociology, history and rural economics. It is found that the outcomes of these academic analyses are in sharp contrast to the approaches propagated and translated into practice by development agencies, which often start from oversimplified and inadmissibly generalised assumptions, so that one must ask whether the diverging logics of these two disciplines are responsible for this marked difference.

Suggested Citation

  • Volker Stamm, 2009. "Social Research and Development Policy: Two Approaches to West African Land-tenure Problems," Africa Spectrum, Institute of African Affairs, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, vol. 44(2), pages 29-52.
    • Handle: RePEc:gig:afjour:v:44:y:2009:i:2:p:29-52
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/afsp/article/view/123/123
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Klaus Deininger, 2003. "Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15125, December.
    2. Place, Frank, 2009. "Land Tenure and Agricultural Productivity in Africa: A Comparative Analysis of the Economics Literature and Recent Policy Strategies and Reforms," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 1326-1336, August.
    3. Brasselle, Anne-Sophie & Gaspart, Frederic & Platteau, Jean-Philippe, 2002. "Land tenure security and investment incentives: puzzling evidence from Burkina Faso," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 373-418, April.
    4. Fons De Zeeuw, 1997. "Borrowing of Land, Security of Tenure and Sustainable Land Use in Burkina Faso," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 28(3), pages 583-595, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Akhmadiyeva, Zarema & Herzfeld, Thomas, 2021. "How does practice matches land laws in Central Asia?," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    2. Ruth Hall & Donna Hornby & Steven Lawry & Aaron Leopold & Farai Mtero & Cyrus Samii, 2012. "PROTOCOL: The Impact of Land Property Rights Interventions on Agricultural Productivity in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review," Campbell Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(1), pages 1-48.
    3. Muna Shifa & Murray Leibbrandt & Martin Wittenberg, 2015. "Does tenure insecurity explain the variations in land-related investment decisions in rural Ethiopia?," SALDRU Working Papers 150, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    4. Keijiro Otsuka & Frank Place, 2014. "Changes in Land Tenure and Agricultural Intensification in Sub-Saharan Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2014-051, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Stéphane Korsaga, 2018. "Land Tenure Security, Land-Related Investments and Agricultural Performance in Sub-Saharan Africa: Efficiency or Equity? A Microeconomic Analysis Applied to the Case of Burkina Faso," Working Papers halshs-01699118, HAL.
    6. Bowser, William & Nelson, Carl H., 2012. "Land institutions, investments, and income diversification : Pathways to economic development for Brazil’s quilombo communities," IFPRI discussion papers 1179, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    7. Grimm, Michael & Klasen, Stephan, 2007. "Geography vs. Institutions at the Village Level," Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Göttingen 2007 9, Verein für Socialpolitik, Research Committee Development Economics.
    8. Thomas Vendryes, 2014. "Peasants Against Private Property Rights: A Review Of The Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 971-995, December.
    9. Gottlieb, Charles & Grobovšek, Jan, 2019. "Communal land and agricultural productivity," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 135-152.
    10. Ali, Daniel Ayalew & Deininger, Klaus & Goldstein, Markus, 2014. "Environmental and gender impacts of land tenure regularization in Africa: Pilot evidence from Rwanda," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 262-275.
    11. Macours, Karen, 2002. "Insecurity Of Property Rights And Matching In The Tenancy Market," 2002 Annual meeting, July 28-31, Long Beach, CA 19603, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    12. Klaus Deininger & Daniel Ayalew Ali & Takashi Yamano, 2008. "Legal Knowledge and Economic Development: The Case of Land Rights in Uganda," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 84(4), pages 593-619.
    13. Susanne Väth & Michael Kirk, 2014. "Do property rights and contract farming matter for rural development? Evidence from a large-scale investment in Ghana," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201416, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    14. Han, Wenjing & Zhang, Xiaoling & Zhang, Zhengfeng, 2019. "The role of land tenure security in promoting rural women’s empowerment: Empirical evidence from rural China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 280-289.
    15. Ghebru, Hosaena, 2015. "Is There a Merit to the Continuum Tenure Approach? A Case of Demand for Land Rights Formulation in Rural Mozambique," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211683, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    16. Bambio, Yiriyibin & Bouayad Agha, Salima, 2018. "Land tenure security and investment: Does strength of land right really matter in rural Burkina Faso?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 130-147.
    17. Meinzen-Dick, Ruth & Quisumbing, Agnes & Doss, Cheryl & Theis, Sophie, 2019. "Women's land rights as a pathway to poverty reduction: Framework and review of available evidence," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 72-82.
    18. Holden, Stein T. & Otsuka, Keijiro, 2014. "The roles of land tenure reforms and land markets in the context of population growth and land use intensification in Africa," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 88-97.
    19. Conning, Jonathan & Udry, Christopher, 2007. "Rural Financial Markets in Developing Countries," Handbook of Agricultural Economics, in: Robert Evenson & Prabhu Pingali (ed.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 56, pages 2857-2908, Elsevier.
    20. Katleen Van den Broeck & Carol Newman & Finn Tarp, 2007. "Land Titles and Rice Production in Vietnam," Discussion Papers 07-32, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gig:afjour:v:44:y:2009:i:2:p:29-52. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Andreas Mehler (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dueiide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.