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Indigenous stewardship is essential to the conservation of biocultural diversity, yet conventional conservation models often treat Indigenous territories (ITs) as homogeneous or isolated units. We propose that archipelagos of Indigenous territories (AITs), clusters of ITs that span geographies but are connected through shared cultural or political ties maintained by Indigenous nations, are crucial for understanding and enhancing conservation strategies that recognize the complexity of Indigenous stewardship. We classified 3572 ITs in the Amazon into 4 categories—single or multiple nations with either singular IT or AIT—to assess their spatial heterogeneity, governance, and conservation potential. We then assessed species richness, carbon stocks, and pressures across these different categories. To examine how AITs can enhance biocultural conservation efforts, we conducted a case study of the Cofán Nation in Ecuador. AITs covered 45% of the Amazonian land area and had higher species richness and carbon stocks than single IT configurations. However, AITs faced greater pressures from development and extractive activities. In the case study, the Cofán AIT was shaped by colonization and land titling challenges, but their community‐driven governance, cross‐territorial collaboration, and adaptive responses—such as comanagement agreements and resisting extractive activities—enhanced their ecological and cultural resilience amid growing development pressures. Our findings suggest that AITs facilitate the exchange of resources, knowledge, and cultural practices, which strengthens social connectivity, reinforces governance structures, and enables adaptive management across ITs, thereby enhancing biocultural resilience across discontinuous spaces. This work advocates for a paradigm shift in conservation planning and practice that recognizes the vital role of AITs in sustaining Amazonian ecosystems and Indigenous lifeways, particularly in the face of increasing pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Collective land titling often drags on for decades, while private land concessions and holdings do not face the same problem, creating 'leftovers' of land available for Indigenous peoples to attempt to collectively title. In two ethnographic case studies in Cambodia and Paraguay, we analyse community‐based Indigenous land titling by focusing on the on‐the‐ground dynamics of property relations, Indigenous livelihood shifts and ecological change. In both countries, large agricultural players implemented a staggering change in local landscapes through deforestation, configuring new realities that in turn feed into local environments and titling processes. Adapting their livelihoods to living in the leftovers, in Cambodia, the Indigenous Bunong shifted from rice to rubber as they navigated the slow titling process. In Paraguay, some Indigenous Guarani shifted from corn to cattle by renting out their collectively titled land. The case studies show that the liberal titling approach to secure Indigenous lands overestimates the ability of title to remove land from capitalist logics such as the push to rent or sell, while some spaces of autonomy are opened. We critique the liberal approaches to formalising title, where Indigenous struggles for their ways of life are funnelled into fighting for collective property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses an initiative in 2017 to update and digitise textual land records in Telangana, a south Indian state. Its premise is that experiments to modernise land records have not met with pre‐determined standards of success due, primarily, to the historically evolved contradictions around land as a resource and a commodity. In countries like India, the colonial policies on land and the post‐colonial success of landlords to manipulate land records had already left the post‐War task of ensuring conclusive land titles intractable. In more recent times, however, the agenda of land records modernisation has been absorbed by neoliberalism, which aims to create free land markets and replace traditional subsidies with direct cash transfers. This article shows that, consequently, the task of land records modernisation in Telangana became disembedded from agendas of agrarian egalitarianism and was rendered more complex—historical errors and exclusions were reproduced in new ways; technocratic solutions of the bureaucracy made governmental processes opaque; landed sections continued to subvert implementation; tenants were excluded from the land titles; and there were fears that the scheme would be misused to ease corporate land acquisition. Land records modernisation remains important for agrarian reform, but its success remains contingent on a greater appreciation among policymakers for the historical and political economy aspects of land ownership and possession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The photo captured in 2018 during a one‐week stopover on a trip between two Central Rainforest regions of Peru is the point of departure for a reflection on the use of sound by Asháninka, Nomatsiguenga, and other rainforest peoples for "Amasonic" politics. A wide span of genres ranging from autochthonous songs produced by ensembles playing percussions and pan‐flutes to school bands performing military marches is key when rainforest peoples exert pressure in the provincial capital to obtain land titles and other rights. Asháninka and Nomatsiguenga leaders also create soundscapes pervaded by politics at local gatherings to consume manioc beer and ally with supporters to enhance their demands. Disputes take place within these shared soundscapes, as evidenced by a Mother's Day celebrations at which Indigenous and nonindigenous school teachers chose diverging music and dances for their grades to perform because of disagreement about what is essential for the Peruvian repertoire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain technologies are increasingly live‐tested in experiments aimed at improving governance in a growing range of activities. A key question often lost amongst these efforts is whether such projects redistribute wealth and power, and, if so, in which ways. Examining the case of blockchain‐based land governance, this contribution explores the tensions between ambitious visions and their actual scales of implementation around the redistributional promises of distributed ledger technologies. Bringing together the concepts of 'imaginaries' and 'infrastructures', we analyse land governance blockchainization emerging in the Global South and the metaverse. Identifying a contrast between imaginaries 'scaling up' redistributive promises yet tending to materialize in 'scaled‐down' forms, we argue for more sustained attention to pluriversal perspectives that foreground local concerns and diverse voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on PREZEIS, an internationally acclaimed participatory slum governance program in Recife, Brazil. PREZEIS was implemented in 1987 and emerged out of a strong popular movement that resisted forced evictions of squatter settlements under the military regime (1964–1985). To date, however, its main objectives—upgrading slums and regularizing land rights—have not been achieved, and its executive powers have been dismantled over the years. We argue that this institutionalization of a popular movement gave birth to a "zombie program" that lives off the past and refuses to die. We advance the zombie metaphor through the Lacanian notion of "fetishistic disavowal," of knowing PREZEIS is "dead" but still believing it can be revived through ritualistic, fetishistic activities. We argue that the challenge is to accept its death, opening up the possibility for something truly new to arise. In the conclusion, we also explore how this factors into broader debates on urban post‐politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of formal collective property rights to forest lands appears to have improved both environmental and economic outcomes, but there is limited evidence on how these reforms affect cooperative behavior among local resource users. We propose that when national governments issue collective land rights, they strengthen the collective psychological ownership among coowners and produce increased levels of cooperative behavior. Analyzing data from 213 forest user groups in 10 countries, and a framed field experiment in a subset of sites, we find that collective land titling is associated with significantly higher levels of cooperative behavior including increased levels of trust, more frequent interpersonal interactions related to both forestry and nonforestry activities, more self‐governing institutions, and greater equality in resource extraction patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under certain circumstances, land titling, property regime changes, and land‐use conversions yield substantial profits. Yet few people possess the wealth, knowledge, and networks to benefit from these procedures. In the Yucatán Peninsula, a region recently targeted as a prominent investment location by the Mexican national government (mainly with the "Tren Maya" megaproject) and the private capital, forestlands collectively owned as ejidos by Mayan peasants are on the trend to complete privatization. Against the arguments of neo‐institutional economists that in the 1990s promoted legal reforms and justified land‐titling programmes worldwide to make available credit for uncapitalized peasants, individual land titling of commonly held lands in Mexico increased the overall economic value of the land, but not the investment in economic activities related to farmland and indigenous communities. Instead, those policies enabled land grabbing, dispossession, and urbanization. In this article, I describe recent private‐led initiatives of ejido land titling that have redefined agricultural land's uses, meanings, and values for capitalist accumulation. In doing so, I explain how and why Mayan ejidatarios have been excluded from the monetary benefits of land titling, a top‐bottom dispossession process only accomplished through shadow procedures and former privatization of ejidos' common lands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a cost–benefit approach, policy dismantling literature typically examines case studies following omitted and blame‐avoidance strategies, which contrasts with the highly visible dismantling fostered by Bolsonaro's far‐right administration in Brazil. This study examines the mechanisms leading to this active process and places it in the context of major policy changes in several fields (i.e., rural development, land titling, social protection, environment, and protection of indigenous peoples). It shows that dismantling decisions were made incrementally by conservative coalitions that seized upon the economic crisis to consolidate a neoliberal turn; however, this turn was radicalized with the expansion of the conservative alliance and tied together by populist rhetoric. This study sheds light on the politics of policy dismantling and addresses it as a process of democratic backsliding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mid-1990s, as peace was consolidated in Cambodia, land conflicts started to replace the Khmer Rouge as the main threat to peace and the social order. Beban's book provides a valuable and detailed account of Hun Sen's Order 01 land-titling initiative. Alice Beban's new book I Unwritten Rule i is an actor-oriented analysis of a land-titling initiative by Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen. [Extracted from the article]

We use household survey data to investigate the relationship between formal, private property rights to agricultural land and agricultural investment, land valuation and access to credit in Tanzania. Results show that landownership documents are associated with substantial increases in the market value of land (more than 25%). One reason appears to be that well‐documented private property rights facilitate the use of land as collateral for loans and therefore ease access to credit. The findings suggest that there are potentially significant, economic returns to systematic land titling in Tanzania and other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on official survey data from the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs collected in 2010 and 2015, we use the difference‐in‐differences method to study how the Chinese land titling reform beginning in 2009 in tiers ("the Reform") affected the demand, supply, access, and rationing on the Chinese rural credit market. Our main findings are: (1) the Reform increased households' hidden credit demand, but not their effective credit demand; (2) the Reform had no significant effect on effective credit supply or a household's credit access; (3) the Reform increased the likelihood of non‐price credit rationing, in particular risk rationing; and (4) in the subsample of households living in counties where the local governments explicitly permitted the use of land as collateral, the Reform had a positive effect on credit supply; but in the subsample of households living in counties where land collateral was not explicitly permitted, the Reform was associated with an increase in non‐price rationing. Findings of this study are not only useful to assess the economic and social implications of rural land titling in China, but they also offer insights in understanding similar policies in other countries, particularly developing economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the new material value of land in postcolonial Vanuatu intensifies people's shaping and re‐shaping of claims to autonomy and dependence. Ahamb, like many other villages in Melanesia, originated as a mission community with people moving in from various original homelands. The mix of people from different places facilitated new kinship bonds and senses of community. However, it has also sparked disputes over land rights and leadership, fuelled by the postcolonial government's incentives for converting customary land into registered titles and leases for wealthy investors. The possibility of leasing out land, and preventing others from leasing out land, creates a dynamic where groups increasingly define themselves in terms of landowner clans that exclude outsiders rather than the wider kin networks that include them. Redefinitions of social boundaries generate secondary disputes over dependence and autonomy where care of kin, Christian commitment and future aspirations sometimes prove to be incompatible and in need of negotiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unfounded belief that there was a peasant commune in the Levant very similar to the Russian mir, and that it was inefficient, precluded historians from understanding the true role of the institution of mushāʿ in this region. The mushāʿ land title represented the attachment of a particular community to specific plots of land. In this context, 'community' often meant nuclear and extended families in suprahouseholds, as well as the entire village. People in these communities tended to derive income from land according to recognized arrangements such as mutual use of grazing lands, and joint or individual cultivation with or without land repartition among cultivators. The comparison with mir was relevant only for one form of the institution, namely, repartitioned mushāʿ. Redistribution or repartition varied according to specific 'factors of production' or to informal and formal property rights. It did not prove less efficient than the reformed, individualized system of land management, and was possibly more effective in resisting laws that allowed the seizure of lands that had not been cultivated for three years. All forms of mushāʿ required greater communal mutual support and responsibility, which significantly reduced risks in times of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The anthropology of water is in a moment of intense theoretical development. Two of them, Ulrich Oslender's I The Geographies of Social Movements i and Katie Glaskin's I Crosscurrents i , do not analyze water per se. In particular, these chapters shed light on the horrifying effects of two different missions - one German, one British - that struggled financially and were partly funded by the exploitation of littoral resources, such as sea shells, collected by Jawi and Bardi people. [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores how rural land in Cambodia has been incorporated into global networks of finance capital through the technical and political processes of turning land into a financial asset. Since the 1990s, the Cambodian government and international development institutions have issued land titles to people to formalise land ownership and increase people's access to formal credit. At the same time, Cambodia's commercial microfinance industry has rapidly grown to become one of the largest markets in the world per capita. The industry has expanded in part because microfinance institutions use land title for collateral on household loans as a method to manage the financial risk of their foreign investors and shareholders. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research conducted with ACLEDA Bank, Cambodia's largest provider of microfinance loans, to examine how the rural land market and microfinance sector are assembled together. I argue that microfinance markets in Cambodia depend on credit officers establishing a capitalist regime of land value. To do so, credit officers engage in daily bricolage, using technologies of representation and data inscription, to create new grids of land evaluation that allow people to treat their land as a financial asset. I also argue that collateral is a kind of technology of control that reworks and respatialises household social reproduction for the benefit of financial accumulation. This paper thus contributes to our theoretical understanding of how land, labour, and finance capital are assembled together, and the political economic ramifications of such an assemblage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the post‐genocide period, the Government of Rwanda embarked on a land tenure reform programme that culminated in a land registration and titling process in 2009. This paper intends to capture women's experiences in relation to this programme. The empirical data were collected in Musanze District using a household survey, semi‐structured interviews, and focus group discussions. The main findings reveal that there is support of the general idea that women should benefit from the land tenure reform in Rwanda. However, there is some criticism towards parts of the land laws, and women have limited actual knowledge about land‐related laws. With land titles, women mostly have a say on the land use decisions requiring each of the spounses' legal consents but not on the daily management of land and its produce. Finally, the paper reports the persistence of social norms and culturally biased gender ideologies affecting the effective implementation of land‐related laws and policies. Therefore, the paper underscores the need to build the implementation of new laws and policies on a good understanding of customary practices to strengthen women's land rights in Rwanda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the disjuncture between women's formal land rights and their attaining these in practice, examining the four agrarian reforms carried out by progressive governments after 2000 in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela. It finds that while all four strengthened women's formal land rights, only the reforms in Bolivia and Brazil resulted in a significant share and number of female beneficiaries. In both countries, strong national-level rural women's movements were the main advocates behind women's land rights in a context in which they formed part of the coalition that brought these regimes to power. In Bolivia, women have benefited principally through joint titling of land to couples in the country's massive land regularization programme. Brazil's reform has been the most redistributionary, and women have benefited through the priority given to female household heads as well as the mandatory joint allocation of land to couples in the agrarian reform settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous territorial governments in Nicaragua's North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region experience ongoing land and resource contests, in many cases building from longstanding disputes or problems, even after titling. I argue that it is naïve to expect that granting titles - a supposed territorial fix - will resolve conflicts created across decades as a result of ineffective policies and economic pressures. As shown with three demarcated Miskitu territories, tenure insecurity arises from challenges with the state, private firms, non-indigenous colonists, and even from the activities of territorial leaders. These cases suggest the need to move beyond perceptions of Miskitu territories as simple bounded remnants of the past and acknowledge they are complex, porous, trans-local, and transgressed by processes such as migration, urbanisation, and neoliberal economic integration. Indeed, new territorial governments are encouraged by foreign donors and state laws to mirror government agencies and prioritise market linkages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates empirically the effect of land invasions on farm production decisions. The main hypothesis is that more invasions in a region are associated with lower investment, and in particular a bias towards annual crops as opposed to long-term crops. We use a county-level dataset for the state of Paraná, Brazil, from 2003 to 2007, with 1,995 observations. The panel data structure allows us to control for fixed effects, such as the formalisation of land titles and land concentration, which might be correlated with the intensity of invasions. An instrumental variable fixed effects model was estimated to avoid other sources of bias. Our main finding is that land invasions are associated with lower long-term crop production and a higher percentage of annual crops, which could accelerate land degradation, and undermine environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers whether extrinsic material should be available in interpreting registered documents when these may be contractual in nature or relate to contractual agreements. Many registers, for example the current scheme for recording land title, are intended to facilitate the reliance of third parties on their content, an objective that suggests that extrinsic material should be excluded. Such an approach, however, could itself cause unfairness and conflicts with the way that contractual documents are normally interpreted. Exploring this question leads us to consider the contextual approach to contractual interpretation generally and whether it should take account of the contemplated effects of contractual language on third parties. After concluding in the affirmative, we then ask whether this is sufficient as an approach to interpreting contractual documents entered into a register. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2001 a new Land Law was adopted in Cambodia. It was significant because - for the first time - it recognised a new legal category of people, ' Indigenous Peoples' or chuncheat daoem pheak tech in Khmer, and it also introduced the legal concept of communal land rights to Cambodia. Indigenous Peoples are not mentioned in the 1993 constitution of Cambodia or any legislation pre-dating the 2001 Land Law. However, Cambodia's 2002 Forestry Law also followed the trend by recognising ' Indigenous Peoples'. These laws have been both symbolically and practically important, as they have provided government-mandated legitimacy to Indigenous identities and associated land and forest rights, including communal land rights, and have been ontologically significant in dividing Indigenous and non- Indigenous Peoples on legal grounds. Over a decade after the 2001 Land Law was promulgated, this article considers some aspects of its effects. In particular, when compared with the potential for developing communal land rights in Laos, one has to wonder how advantageous it is to adopt Indigenous identities and the types of communal land rights and community forestry rights presently possible in Cambodia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia's Northern Territory, the Larrakia have been involved in a decades-long effort to gain recognition as traditional owners through Land Rights and Native Title legislation. From one perspective, their claims have failed to achieve the entitlement and recognition grounded in these governmental regimes (Scambary 2007; Povinelli 2002). However, over the past decade the Larrakia Nation Aboriginal Corporation ( LNAC) and the Larrakia Development Corporation ( LDC) have emerged as locally powerful corporate bodies that pursue programs and exercise forms of power on behalf of the Larrakia that can be understood in terms of state and governmental practice. Through suburban development, a night patrol, educational and vocational training, a radio station, and through forms of policy research and statistical enumeration, the Larrakia nation have emerged in the eyes of many as a de facto Aboriginal 'state' in the Darwin region. This paper explores the intra- Indigenous relations through which these practices have emerged, and analyses the extent to which the LNAC might be understood as a kind of 'state' within a state, responsible for world-shaping activities of knowledge production, housing and health outreach, vocational training and education, and policing. Focussing on the forms of 'stateness' that accrue to the Larrakia Nation in Darwin through its policing, knowledge production, and outreach programs for Aboriginal campers, the article explores the differential articulation of Aboriginal groups with the state. It concludes by asking how such differences matter in contexts of planned urbanisation in the Northern Territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1992 Australian Aboriginal communities have been engaged in a complex and fraught legal process for the recognition of their traditional rights to country ('native title'). In this article I argue that it is theoretically and critically illuminating to investigate the broader 'meaning effects' of the native title determination process on the subjective experience of the state in Australia. The article demonstrates this through examining the narrative effects of certain discursive moments through which identities get objectified. Through examining such moments in the discourse and practice of native title from the perspective of a participant-observer, I seek to advance our theoretical understanding of how the narrative properties of speech (or other performative behaviours) in specific contexts structure the subjective experience of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Cameroon's modern land policy. Initially, it traces the policy's roots to the colonial era. As the only African country that came under the control of three European colonial powers, viz. Germany, Britain and France, Cameroon provides a unique opportunity to understand colonialism's influence on Africa's persistent land problem. This is because the problem is structurally embedded in the historical processes of colonial rule. The heart of the article focuses on the policy's provisions for land tenure formalization, especially the land titling process. Of interest are the implications of this process for questions of equity, fairness and justice as they relate to access to land in the country. It suggests that, contrary to what proponents claim, land tenure formalization is not a panacea enabling capital accumulation for all. The article marshals evidence to show that the land tenure formalization requirements in Cameroon have effectively served to aggravate socioeconomic inequalities in the country. This is especially because the requirements favour societal elites, including bureaucrats, politicians and entrepreneurs. The article concludes that, by making government-issued land titles the unique testament to landownership, the country's indigenous authorities have aggravated the problem of inequitable, unfair and unjust access to land that they inherited from their colonial predecessors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropologists working on native title cases in Australia are commonly asked to identify the Aboriginal 'society' that holds the body of laws and customs that confer land ownership rights on certain groups of people. In this paper I investigate how the early documentation of bora initiation ceremonies is relevant to understanding contemporary Aboriginal societies and the normative laws and customs that give rise to rights and interests in land. The vast ethnographic oeuvre of R.H. Mathews (1841-1918) includes detailed documentation of bora gatherings, which allows the reconstruction of the wider social reaches of people's networks in the lower Darling Downs of eastern Australia, and can in turn be understood as the 'society' so often sought in current native title case law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK White Paper on International Development published in 2009 explicitly links access to financial services with poverty reduction. In doing so, it echoes the policies the World Bank set out in its 2008 Policy Research Report on Finance. This paper offers a detailed analysis of these development policies and connects the current plans for the expansion of financial sectors in the developing world with policies that promote the acquisition of formal land title. The paper argues that as asset-backed lending expands, commercial banks will come to play an increasingly important role in third world economies. In light of this, it reviews important first-hand accounts of the difficulties of drafting legislation to protect women's access to land in the face of opposition from commercial lenders, using Tanzania and Uganda as illustrative examples. The paper assesses the implications of expanding access to credit for gender equality and concludes that it is difficult to reconcile the promotion of financial inclusion with the aim of international development to end poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the ability and process of government land titling as a method to achieve secure property rights institutions. Specifically, we analyze the impact of government land titling in rural Peru. Our findings suggest that land titling does not achieve the positive benefits associated with secure property, such as access to credit. We also find that individuals prefer private enforcement methods of securing property to public means. This suggests that government land titling is not always a channel through which countries can achieve secure property rights institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Urban & Regional Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite the overreaching importance that the international donor community places on formal land titles as part of the process for securing property rights, improving the functioning of the land market and ensuring pro-poor development, little attention is given to the specific ways in which factors such as inequality and abuses of public office mediate or even negate the expected effect of land titles. Based on empirical data from Nicaragua, this article shows that the state system is costly and does not provide a level playing field. In addition to land titles, different actions are used to secure property rights, drawing on other authorities which represent plural sources of recognition of land rights. Furthermore, the study shows that land transactions are often not followed up with titling and inscription in the name of the new owner, especially not among the poorest landowners. This has implications for future land titling policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes connections between often-disparate literatures on property, violence and identity, using the politics of rubber growing in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, as an example. It shows how rubber production gave rise to territorialities associated with and productive of ethnic identities, depending on both the political economies and cultural politics at play in different moments. What it meant to be Chinese and Dayak in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia, as well as how categories of subjects and citizens were configured in the two respective periods, differentially affected both the formal property rights and the means of access to rubber and land in different parts of West Kalimantan. However, incremental changes in shifting rubber production practices were not the only means of producing territory and ethnicity. The author argues that violence ultimately played a more significant role in erasing prior identity-based claims and establishing the controls of new actors over trees and land and their claims to legitimate access or ¿rightfulness¿. Changing rubber production practices and reconfigurations of racialized territories and identity-based property rights are all implicated in hiding the violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a model that shows that asymmetric information can result in two types of credit rationing: conventional quantity rationing, and “risk rationing,” whereby farmers are able to borrow but only under high-collateral contracts that offer them lower expected well-being than a safe, subsistence activity. After exploring its incidence with respect to wealth, we show that risk rationing has important policy implications. Specifically, land titling will be only partially effective because it does not enhance producers' willingness to offer up the collateral needed to secure loans under moral hazard constraints. Efforts to enhance agricultural investment and the working of agricultural credit markets must step beyond land titling and also deal with risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RESUMEN Este artículo analiza tanto el proceso como los efectos del proceso de titulación de las tierras indígenas por parte del pueblo Ashéninka en el Perú. Aquí se toman en cuenta las relaciones entre el estado y los grupos indígenas y se muestra cómo estas relaciones pueden ocurrir en múltiples maneras, difiriendo no sólo entre distintos grupos nativos sino también al interior de un mismo grupo étnico. El artículo compara las diferentes historias de varias comunidades Ashéninka; tanto las que han luchado por la obtención de derechos a la tierra como las que han buscado su reconocimiento oficial como parte de un proceso de formalización legal. En comunidades del segundo tipo el artículo muestra que el deseo de lograr una mejor educación para sus hijos es el fundamento de la búsqueda del reconocimiento oficial. El artículo toma en cuenta los efectos que conlleva para los Ashéninka el vivir en comunidades oficialmente reconocidas. Concluye que las identidades y acciones comuna les pueden ser no una motivación sino mas bien la consecuencia en la comunidad de un reconocimiento oficial de derechos a la tierra. This article analyzes the process and effects of land titling in Ashéninka communities in eastern central Peru. Through this analysis the article considers the relationship between nation states and indigenous groups and shows how this relationship can occur in multiple ways, differing not only between distinct indigenous groups but also within a single ethnic grouping. The article compares accounts of Ashéninka communities that have had to fight for their rights to land with the experiences of communities that have sought official recognition as part of an established legal process. In these latter communities the article argues that it is the Ashéninka's desire for schooling that underpins their wish to gain official recognition. The article also considers the effects that living in defined settlements is having and concludes that communal identities and action can be a result of the recognition of land rights rather than an impetus for land rights claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key feature of water policy reform in Australia has been the separation of water access entitlements from land titles and the establishment of markets for water. However, the separation of water entitlements from land failed to account for a number of characteristics that were implicit in the joint right. This has given rise to a number of third party effects as water is traded in an incomplete market. This paper describes four third-party effects of water trade; reliability of supply, timeliness of delivery, storage and delivery charges, and water quality and examines policy responses to address these effects. The discussion draws on the concepts of exclusiveness and rivalry to determine the applicability of property rights and other solutions to the third-party effects of trade. It is likely that many of the third-party effects of trade discussed in this paper do not warrant policy intervention at the national or state level, but intervention at the local level may be warranted. The costs of addressing some third-party effects may outweigh the benefits. Where there are significant gains from trade, the existence of these third-party effects should not been seen as a reason to impede trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In native title cases a judge must determine the extent to which the current practices of applicants for native title relate to the practices of their forebears at sovereignty. It is proposed that evidence of the continuity and preservation of tradition from the time of sovereignty must be derived from records and/or expert opinion. This is so because brief historical recall is instituted in Aboriginal societies and cultures and, therefore, Aboriginal witnesses cannot testify to continuities that belong to what, for them, is time immemorial. Relevant observations are cited from the literature to establish the quiddities of brief recall and the editing of histories of deviation. Aboriginal hunter-gathers are then compared with the peoples of feuding corporations, blood-debt and the heritable grudge in order to answer the question: Why in Aboriginal Australia is there an instituted and rapid onset of temps perdu? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the popular and public policy interest in housing prices, there have been few reliable published data for housing prices in Australia. In this article we aim to provide an authoritative account of prices for houses and apartments (units) in Australia from 1970 to 2003. Where possible we draw on data from land title offices or on studies that draw on these data, but we also draw on supplementary data in some cases. The first part of the article describes the major data sources of Australian house prices. The main body of the article provides our best estimates of median house and unit prices and real price indices in the capital cities and in the rest of Australia along with explanations for their derivations. We also estimate how improvements in housing quality have influenced real house prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural producers’ access to formal finance has often been limited by their inability to provide collaterals, particularly in the form of registered or certified land titles and tenancy contracts or assets which are auctionable as well as by laws that make foreclosure difficult. This paper reviews some of the alternative institutional arrangements(possibilities) for reducing and overcoming collateral requirements such as third party guarantees, ownership of tradeable assets, credit guarantee schemes, group lending, credit-savings linkages, incremental and loan repayment-dependent lending, portfolio diversification and an efficient legal system for contract enforcement. It also specifies the land policy and tenure reforms that are desirable, especially in the direction of formal land titling or legally specified rights to the use and ownership of lands, the consolidation of land holdings and the provision of proper cadastres for land and assuring that titles are secure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the native title law, policy and practice in Australia. Implication of the Australian High Court's 1992 decision in the Mabo case; Discussion of the native title's commercial and human rights dimensions; Benefits of the implementation of Australian Prime Minister John Howard's legislated 10 Point Plan for native title.

Commonly employed global tests for separability between production and consumption decisions are theoretically inappropriate when the market failures creating non–separabilities differentially constrain some, but not all households. Simulated maximum likelihood estimates using Chinese panel data reject the restrictions implied by a global separability test in favor of regime–specific or local separability tests. The estimates also show that a global approach to separability obscures the significant effect that less–encumbered land transfer rights would have on shadow factor price equalization across households and allocative efficiency. The findings on transfer rights suggest a resolution to the debate in China on further property rights reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is, of course, well established in English law that a person who wrongfully acquires possession of an item of physical property, whether land or a chattel, acquires a title which is good against all but a person who can prove a better title. It need hardly be said that a thief is a most unmeritorious claimant, and it was not difficult to find statements denying or doubting, that a thief would acquire a defensible title.

Eco-tourism is undermining black smallholders' entitlement to land in Zimbabwe. In the 1890s, British administrators restrained whites from alienating the whole of the country by demarcating native reserves. In terms of this limited aim, the policy of native reserves worked. It ensured a land base for black agriculture, particularly for women and children. In the late 1980s, however, CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Programmefor Indigenous Resources) invited the tourism industry to begin operations in the lowland reserves. These firms have claimed land, made money and relocated smallholders. Based on economic and ecological arguments, CAMPFIRE has redefined the black entitlement as merely a claim competing with those of other ‘stakeholders’. No guarantees exist for residents and cultivators. Indeed, government and NGOs are fast transforming the lowland reserves into privileged and subsidized investment zones. Held in check for a century, a new kind of settler colonialism is sweeping down from the highlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main focus of state intervention in Latin American agriculture in the 1990s was on land-titling programmes, designed to promote security of tenure and enliven land markets. A review of seven of these projects suggests that they were often designed without sufficient attention to civil codes and marital regimes that protect women's property rights. They often ignored that a household's endowment of land may consist of three forms of property: the wife's, the husband's and jointly owned property. By assuming that the family farm is owned by the male household head, these projects trampled upon women's ownership rights. Nonetheless, the share of female beneficiaries of land-titling projects has been much higher than the share of women adjudicated land under the agrarian reforms of previous decades. This is partly because the primary way that women acquire land is through inheritance, and inheritance appears to be more gender equitable than other manners of acquiring land. It is also due to the impact of the more gender-equitable agrarian legislation of the current period, itself a product of the impact of women's movements on the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1. A report on the scientific aspects of the consequences of tourism and other leisure activities on the marine flora and fauna has been prepared on behalf of the French Ministry of the Environment. This involved an exhaustive bibliographical review resulting in a series of proposals to address some of the issues highlighted. 2. Our knowledge is too often based on observations of the deeds and misdeeds of tourism along with only a small amount of experimental study. 3. The main proposals are that there should be: (1) a compilation of all studies ordered by and for the State and its decentralized services, local communities and private companies; (2) definition of priority species and ecosystems; (3) observations on the direct and indirect impacts by tourists and sportsmen on the natural environment for each one of the large biotopes; (4) quantification of the impact of recreational fishing; (5) an integration of biological, sociological, economic and judicial disciplines in the management of the marine environment. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of 'race' has assumed an extraordinarily salient position in Australian politics since the election of the conservative Howard government in 1996. Central to debate in the Australian polity has been the nature of the relationship between indigenous, or Aboriginal, Australians and the rest of the population, in particular over the issue of the land rights of indigenous people. Land rights, or 'native title', assumed a pre-eminent position in national political life in 1996-97 with the handing down by the High Court of the so-called 'Wik judgment '. The discursive management of the ensuing debate by Australia's political leaders is illuminative of key sites of interest in the analysis of political rhetoric and the construction of 'racially sensitive' issues. Taking the texts of 'addresses to the nation' on Wik by the leaders of the two major political parties as analytic materials, we examine two features of the talk. First, examine how the speakers manage their stake in the position they advance, with an extension of previous work on reported speech into the area of set-piece political rhetoric. Second, in contrast to approaches which treat social categories as routine, mundane and unproblematic objects, we demonstrate the local construction of category memberships and their predicates as strategic moves in political talk. Specifically, we demonstrate how the categories of 'Aborigines' and 'farmers', groups central to the dispute, are strategically constructed to normatively bind certain entitlements to activity to category membership. Furthermore, inasmuch as such categories do not, in use, reflect readily perceived objective' group entities in the 'real' world, so too 'standard' discursive devices and rhetorical structures are themselves shown to be contingently shaped and strategically deployed for contrasting local, ideological and rhetorical ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study utilizes interpersonal justice concepts to examine issues of fairness in the intergenerational transfer of non-titled property. Individual family members who had experienced property transfers articulate previously unidentified distributive justice goals and decision rules, as well as procedural justice elements and guidelines. Future family inheritance research ideas using interpersonal justice concepts are suggested. Findings provide the basis for family focused educational resources addressing the meaning of fairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Honduran land titling project (the Proyecto de Titulacion de Tierra para los Pequenos Productores), initiated in 1982, was intended to enhance security in land rights, to facilitate credit and to improve agricultural productivity. This study explores how the project has operated in one village, and concludes that it has attained none of its objectives; instead, it has triggered new sources of land conflicts, thus adding to the existing complex of local rules and laws. The authors argue that the failure of the project is not solely a consequence of the organizational incapacity of the bureaucracy, as some evaluations suggest, but that it is rooted in mistaken assumptions about the social organization of property rights and the causes of insecurity. The land titling project is founded on a contradiction: although based on the ideology of the capitalizing family farm in the context of a withdrawing state, its implementation actually requires strong and repressive state intervention. Rather than reducing insecurity in property rights, the project has merely 'modernized' the sources which can be used to contest rights in land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The property tax is a widely used fiscal tool in many developing countries. However, property tax evasion and underpayment are common. This fact underscores the need for governments to administer the property tax effectively if they are to maximize revenue for development. A workable system of land registration and cadastral mapping is one of the principal prerequisites for efficient administration of the property tax. This paper examines alternative methods of land registration and cadastral mapping appropriate for governments in developing countries. The registration of deeds and titles is discussed, as are the most appropriate means for their implementation. Similarly, the different types of cadastral systems, fiscal, legal and multi-purpose, and the survey methods necessary for their implementation, are reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]