Embracing risky refuge: women, land laws and livelihood vulnerabilities in rural Kenya

There has been a growing interest in laws governing resources particularly land in reference to gender in Africa. Law reforms in relation to land have produced potentially useful regulations and espoused egalitarian land rights. However, the backdrop to these reforms contains a scene of land disputes, resistance to laws, violence against women and poor enforcement leading to injustices to women with a pervasive effect on families in vulnerable communities. Using focused ethnographic research methods, the writer investigated women's land rights between November 2015 and August 2016. In-depth interviews, focus group discussions, review of archival records and observations were utilised. The study found that in contexts of prolonged livelihood vulnerabilities, as in the case of the Luo people of south-western Kenya, women seeking refuge from livelihood difficulties employ two strategies to anchor their security. They migrate from marital homes to fishing villages and also lay claim to marital land, which is held by men according to customary laws. These strategies produce social dilemmas and risky manoeuvering. Statutory land laws that are enacted to mitigate land related conflicts undermine the existing customary land laws that advantage men. Therefore, women's land claims, and statutory land laws that espouse equality in land ownership, destabilise men's sense of masculinity. By drawing on the experiences of women, I show the intersection between land laws, enduring injustices and gender relations in a context of strained livelihoods.

Land Reform for a Landless Chief in South Africa: History and Land Restitution in KwaZulu-Natal

Land claims and contests have been central to the construction of political authority across the African continent. South Africa’s post-apartheid land reform program aims to address historical dispossessions, but the program has experienced numerous obstacles and limits—in terms of pace, communal land access, productivity, and rural class divides. Drawing on archival and newspaper sources, Kelly traces how the descendant of a colonially-appointed, landless chief manipulated a claim into a landed chieftaincy and how both the chief and the competing claimants have deployed histories of landlessness and firstcomer accounts in a manner distinct to the KwaZulu-Natal region as part of the land restitution process.

Ambiguity And Irreconcilability: A Critical Look At Reconciliation Discourse In Federal Land Claims And Self-Government Political Communications

<div>Can reconciliation be meaningful when it is at once a journey, a path, a milestone, a framework, a tool of economic development, a spirit, and a process? In this thesis, I use a multimethod approach to problematize how reconciliation discourse is employed ambiguously in both policy and practice in order to maintain settler colonial occupation of stolen Indigenous lands. I first conduct a policy review of federal land claims and self-government frameworks before turning to a Critical Discourse Analysis of public communications to illustrate the limitations of these state-led processes of reconciliation. My analysis elucidates the ways in which these processes are instantiations of settler governmentality that continue to exist as common sense (Rifkin, 2013) within a discursive framework of state-led reconciliation politics. As such, my work demonstrates that in order to work towards the bigger project of decolonization and resurgence, reconciliation must move from purely aspirational terms to substantive, treaty-based responsibilities with the repatriation of Indigenous land as its overarching, incommensurable purpose.</div><div><br></div><div>Keywords: reconciliation politics; settler colonialism; Crown-Indigenous relations; critical policy studies; critical discourse analysis.<br></div>

Ambiguity And Irreconcilability: A Critical Look At Reconciliation Discourse In Federal Land Claims And Self-Government Political Communications

<div>Can reconciliation be meaningful when it is at once a journey, a path, a milestone, a framework, a tool of economic development, a spirit, and a process? In this thesis, I use a multimethod approach to problematize how reconciliation discourse is employed ambiguously in both policy and practice in order to maintain settler colonial occupation of stolen Indigenous lands. I first conduct a policy review of federal land claims and self-government frameworks before turning to a Critical Discourse Analysis of public communications to illustrate the limitations of these state-led processes of reconciliation. My analysis elucidates the ways in which these processes are instantiations of settler governmentality that continue to exist as common sense (Rifkin, 2013) within a discursive framework of state-led reconciliation politics. As such, my work demonstrates that in order to work towards the bigger project of decolonization and resurgence, reconciliation must move from purely aspirational terms to substantive, treaty-based responsibilities with the repatriation of Indigenous land as its overarching, incommensurable purpose.</div><div><br></div><div>Keywords: reconciliation politics; settler colonialism; Crown-Indigenous relations; critical policy studies; critical discourse analysis.<br></div>

Corporate Repertoires of Control and Performances of Power in a Contested Land Deal in Senegal

Farmland investments have attracted numerous entrepreneurs and companies to Africa in the past two decades. However, acquiring, retaining, and exploiting large-scale landholdings is more complicated than it seems. Investors need to persuade governments and populations of their anticipated benefits and limit dissenting voices when they emerge. Focusing on a contested land project in Senegal, Gagné develops the concept of “repertoires of control” to analyze the different performances of power that companies deploy to assert and legitimize their land claims. She argues that to survive, companies must continually adapt these performances to changes in the political environment of their host countries.

Gender and Access to Land Ownership: Christian Reflection on the Experience of Malawian Widows

Most women in Malawi encounter gender-based discrimination and violence when attempting to access land rights. Although legally land is transferred from parents to children, culturally in practical terms, land is either controlled by a brother or an uncle, leaving female members of the family with no decision-making powers. Upon the death of the husband, the widow loses property jointly held with the husband, as well as her own marital property to either the brother of the husband, or to her own brothers and uncles. Regardless of the many years spent in building their life together while enjoying the land they lived on and cared for together, unfortunately, the death of her husband leaves the widow with nothing. Lack of civic education makes many widows remain ignorant of the fact that the Malawian law protects them, and their land claims. This ignorance contributes to the suffering and impoverishment of many widows and leads some to live in acute poverty. The church has a special obligation to protect the rights of widows. It has an obligation to help empower women to secure land and the right to land so that widows can contribute to the larger community. Using a narrative approach, this article will demonstrate the difficulties faced by Malawian widows in terms of land claims. Current practices of inheritance and the ways widows are dispossessed will be uplifted through widows’ own stories about their lived realities. The article will conclude by proffering constructive proposals about how the church can empower widows to find solutions to these very real problems

The Challenges of Sustainable Livelihoods Through Land Restoration in South Africa

This paper explores the extent to which land ownership through restoration results in non-sustainability in the Nonoti community in South Africa. During the apartheid era, Black communities were evicted from their ancestral land to make way for tourism development, though those lands were later repossessed by their original owners. This study aims at exploring the challenges of post-settlement after land restoration to new landowners in the Nonoti Beach resort. This paper is anchored on the sustainable livelihoods theoretical framework to measure the extent to which land can enhance socio-economic development. This study adopted a qualitative research design using in-depth interviews and focus groups. The sample of this study was drawn from the Nonoti local community members and representatives of the government agencies in charge of land restoration. The study concludes that landowners should be capacitated through training and skills development to live sustainably on the land they have acquired through the land claims process.

Analysis of Tenurial Conflict of the Bunaken National Park (A Case Study of Mantehage Island)

Bunaken National Park was designation based on the Decree of the Minister of Forestry Number: SK. 734 / Menhut-II / 2014. Boundary demarcation process of Bunaken National Park in Mantehage Island was rejected by the community due to land claims in the form of gardens and settlements. This study puposes to answer how the state of land cover and use of the Mantehage Island and how the tenurial conflicts. The analysis used is spatial analysis and Rapid Land Tenure Assessment (RaTA). The results indicate that land cover and use consisted of primary mangrove forests, dry land agriculture, mixed gardens, scrub, settlements and roads. Conflict occurred between the community and the Forest Area Boundary Committee for North Minahasa Regency because the community did not understand the boundary demarcation activitiess and regulations that could provide a solution to their land conflict problems. Conflict resolution mechanisms that can be taken is the settlement of third-party rights in boundary demarcation process, review of spatial planning and conservation partnerships.

The Impact of Self-Government, Comprehensive Land Claims, and Opt-In Arrangements on Income Inequality in Indigenous Communities in Canada

In Canada, self-government agreements, comprehensive land claims agreements, and opt-in arrangements allow Indigenous groups to govern their internal affairs and assume greater responsibility and control over the decision-making that affects their communities. We use difference-in-difference models to measure the impact of such agreements on average income and income inequality in Indigenous communities at the community level. In comparison with earlier work, we additionally use data from the 2016 Census. Our results suggest that comprehensive land claims agreements increase community-level average (log) household incomes by more than C$10 thousand (0.25 log points). Attainment of other agreement types does not increase community-level average incomes. Communities that attain a self-government agreement or an opt-in arrangement related to land management see a decrease in the Gini coefficient for income inequality by 2.0 to 3.5 percentage points. Standalone comprehensive land claims agreements are associated with a smaller decrease of 1.2 percentage points. We also study intergroup inequality and find that an opt-in arrangement increases within-community income disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous households.

Governmentality and the new spirit of exploitation: the politics of legitimacy and resistance to Canadian mining in Guatemala and Honduras

The activities of Canadian mining companies operating abroad are often carried out under the banner of bringing badly-needed development and democracy to impoverished regions of the globe. Many of these projects, however, can often lead to increased poverty, conflict and insecurity in communities near the mines. There have also been egregious violations of human rights and grave environmental damages documented at Canadian mines worldwide. As a result, numerous countries in the Americas and beyond have seen burgeoning grassroots resistance movements rejecting the presence of Canadian extractive projects on their territory — movements that are almost invariably rejected as illegitimate by industry and Canadian government representatives, and almost always repressed by host country governments. Using critical discourse analysis and Foucault’s work on governmentality and biopower, this dissertation argues that discourses of democracy and development are increasingly being used to advance projects that are often fundamentally anti-democratic, destructive and exploitative, and that this represents a critical component of a nascent strategy by which neoliberal regimes of capital accumulation are advanced and legitimized today. Through discursive construction of Canadian mining regimes as purveyors of collective “development,” and strategic delegitimization of critics of Canadian mining activities as irrational, radical, dangerous threats to the betterment of society at large, support for the mine is galvanized and conflict surrounding the mine intensifies. This argument is grounded in exploration of three case studies: two open-pit gold/silver mines owned/operated by Goldcorp — their Honduran San Martín mine and their Guatemalan Marlin mine — and the politics of land claims near a non-functioning Guatemalan nickel mine previously owned by Canada’s Skye Resources and HudBay Minerals. Further evidence for this argument is offered in two accompanying documentary films that I have produced, exploring these particular case studies. In demonstrating how foot soldiers are being enlisted into an army that defends the interests of Canadian mining companies and the neoliberal economic order that they proliferate and prosper from — despite the fact that local benefits may be negligible and the harms incurred can be severe — this dissertation seeks to shed light upon a broader dynamic of resistance/counter-resistance playing out globally in areas beyond resource extraction.