Land rights, identity, and the authority nexus in post-independent Eritrea

In the last few decades, land conflicts and the focus on them have been increasing. In Eritrea's case, despite the 1994 land proclamation's justification to reduce land conflicts and the importance of land conflicts in revealing policy and theoretical implications, they are unabated and with scant attention. By purposefully selecting three empirically grounded conflict cases that involve the nexus of land rights-identity-authority, this study analyses state-society relations against the background of a ‘never-give-up litigant society,' legal pluralism, ambivalent land policy and strategy, and incoherent decisions by state institutions. The study reveals that although the land proclamation was designed to weaken and rupture strong ‘man-land’ attachments, sub-national identities, and sentiments for nation-state building, the cases show that strong attachments persist. Moreover, beyond the economic dimension, the cases shed light on the fact that the search for and rejection or recognition to village of origin was the main reason for conflict and contestation among individuals, villages, and state institutions. The overall process brought the society closer to state institutions, which indirectly created a crucial avenue for the everyday practice of nation-state building. Data were collected through interviews and from conflict case documents, which I translated from Tigrigna into English.