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From commons to resilience grabbing: Insights from historically-oriented social anthropological research on African peasants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2022

Tobias Haller
Tobias Haller*
Affiliation:
Institute of Social Anthropology (ISA), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
*
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper aims to show the relevance that institutions governing common-pool resources (CPRs) play in peasant resilience. It outlines nine variables for resilience taken from socio-economic and ecological anthropological theories focusing on subsistence and minimax strategies and used for the comparative historical analysis of African case studies. These include drylands (Morocco, Ghana), semi-arid areas (Sierra Leone, Malawi, Tanzania) and wetlands (Cameroon, Kenya, Zambia). The variables could be found under pre-colonial common property but were no longer operating during colonial and postcolonial institutional change from common to state property and privatisation via land grabbing, leading to commons and resilience grabbing.

French abstract

French Abstract

Cet article vise à démontrer le rôle majeur que jouent les institutions régissant l'ensemble des ressources offertes par les biens communaux dans la résilience paysanne. Sont présentées neuf variables de résilience tirées de travaux proposant diverses théories, d'une part en socio économie et d'autre part en anthropologie écologique, axées sur les stratégies de subsistance et de ‘mini-max'. Ces variables sont mises en œuvre, en anthropologie sociale, pour procéder à l'analyse historique comparative d'études de cas en Afrique. Il s'agit aussi bien de zones arides (Maroc, Ghana), de zones semi-arides (Sierra Leone, Malawi, Tanzanie) que de zones humides (Cameroun, Kenya, Zambie). Ces variables existaient au sein des coutumes gérant les biens communaux à l'époque précoloniale, mais elles ne furent plus d'usage ensuite, ni pendant la période coloniale, ni en période post-coloniale. La décolonisation entraîna un changement institutionnel, avec la nationalisation des biens communaux, devenus propriété de l'État, suivie de leur privatisation via l'accaparement des terres correspondantes, conduisant à l’accaparement de la résilience paysanne.

German abstract

German Abstract

Dieser Beitrag versucht zu zeigen, dass Institutionen zur Lenkung gemeinsamer Ressourcen eine bedeutende Rolle für bäuerliche Widerstandkraft spielen. Er skizziert neun Variablen der Widerstandskraft, die sozioökonomischen und ökologischen Theorien, in deren Zentrum Subsistenz- und Minimax-Strategien stehen, entnommen sind und für die vergleichende historische Analyse afrikanischer Fallstudien nutzbar gemacht werden. Dazu zählen u. a. Trockengebiete (Marokko, Ghana), halbtrockene Gebiete (Sierra Leone, Malawi, Tansania) und Feuchtgebiete (Kamerun, Kenia, Sambia). Diese Variablen ließen sich für präkoloniales Gemeineigentum finden, waren aber während der kolonialen und postkolonialen institutionellen Veränderungen, die mit dem Übergang von gemeindlichem zu staatlichem Bodeneigentum und der Privatisierung durch Landnahme einher gingen, nicht mehr wirksam, was zu gemeindlicher und widerständiger Aneignung führte.

Keywords

AfricaPeasantsCommonsGrabbingResilience
Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 2022 , pp. 69 - 95
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

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19 From a social anthropology perspective ‘commoners’ and commoner's organisations most often refers to people and local groups who have rights to collectively-owned land and its related common-pool resources and not, as for historians, people who are not members of the nobility.

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21 Folke et al., ‘Resilience thinking’.

22 Haller, Liechti and Mann, ‘Commons and peasant studies’.

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29 Haller, ‘The different meanings of land’.

30 M. Hara and Tobias Haller eds., Defragmenting African resource management (Darma) series (Berlin, Münster, Zürich, London, 2014).

31 Haller, ‘Towards a new institutional political ecology’.

32 Haller, Disputing the floodplains.

33 Haller, The contested floodplain.

34 Brockington, Duffy and Igoe, Nature unbound; M. Galvin and Tobias Haller, Perspectives of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) North-South, vol. 3 (University of Bern, 2008).

35 Saturnino M. Borras and Jennifer C. Franco, ‘Global land grabbing and political reactions ‘from below’, Third World Quarterly 34, 9 (2013), 1723–47; Olivier De Schutter, ‘How not to think of land-grabbing: three critiques of large-scale investments in farmland’, The Journal of Peasant Studies 38, 2 (2011), 249–79.

36 Philip McMichael, ‘The land grab and corporate food regime restructuring’, Journal of Peasant Studies 39, 3–4 (2012), 681–701.

37 Borras and Franco, ‘Global land grabbing’.

38 L. Cotula, The great African land grab? Agricultural investments and the global food system (London, 2013); Carlos Oya, ‘Methodological reflections on “land grab” databases and the “land grab” literature “rush”’, The Journal of Peasant Studies 40, 3 (2013), 503–20.

39 M. Giger et al., ‘Impacts of large-scale land acquisitions on common-pool resources’, in Tobias Haller et al. eds., The commons in a glocal world: global connections and local responses (London, 2019), 257–79.

40 Haller, ‘The different meanings of land’; L. Alden Wily, ‘The law is to blame. The vulnerable status of common property rights in sub-Saharan Africa’, Development and Change 42, 3 (2011), 357–79; Cotula, The great African land grab?; Haller, ‘The different meanings of land’.

41 Haller, The contested floodplain; Kristina Lanz, Jean-David Gerber and Tobias Haller, ‘Land grabbing, the state and chiefs: the politics of extending commercial agriculture in Ghana’, Development and Change 49, 6 (2018), 1526–52; Haller, ‘The different meanings of land’; Gerber and Haller, ‘The drama of the grabbed commons’.

42 W. Anseeuw et al., Transnational land deals for agriculture in the global south (Geneva, 2012). https://agritrop.cirad.fr/564609/2/document_564609.pdf; Gerber and Haller, ‘The drama of the grabbed commons’.

43 A. Escobar, Encountering development. The making and unmaking of the Third World, 2. ed. (Princeton/Oxford, 2012); Haller, The contested floodplain; Haller, Ngutu and Käser eds., ‘Does commons grabbing lead to resilience grabbing?’.

44 Robert Fletcher, ‘Neoliberal environmentality: towards a poststructuralist political ecology of the conservation debate’, Conservation and Society 8, 3 (2010), 171–81.

45 Tobias Haller et al., Paradigm change or old wine in new bottles? Debating and reformulating SDGs: an experiment (Bern, 2018); Tobias Haller et al., ‘Large-scale land acquisition as commons grabbing: a comparative analysis of six African case studies’, in R. Ludomy Lozny and T. H. McGovern eds., Global perspectives on long term community resource management (New York, 2019), 125–64; P.B. Larsen et al., ‘Sanctioning disciplined grabs (SDGs): from SDGs as green anti-politics machine to radical alternatives?’ Geoforum, 131, (2022), 20–26.

46 Haller, ‘Towards a new institutional political ecology’.

47 Haller, Ngutu and Käser eds., ‘Does commons grabbing lead to resilience grabbing?’.

48 See Tables 1–3 for an overview of the first three time phases, including all eight cases and how these are related to the nine variables.

49 Sarah Ryser, ‘The anti-politics machine of green energy development: the Moroccan solar project in Ouarzazate and its impact on gendered local communities’, Land 8 (2019), 100.

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51 Haller, The Contested floodplain.

52 Ryser, ‘The anti-politics machine of green energy development’.

53 Haller, The contested floodplain.

54 Ryser, ‘The anti-politics machine of green energy development’.

55 Marfurt, Käser and Lustenberger, ‘Local perceptions and vertical perspectives’.

56 Haller, The contested floodplain.

57 Haller, Disputing the floodplains.

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59 Marfurt, Käser and Lustenberger, ‘Local perceptions and vertical perspectives’; Franziska Marfurt, ‘Gendered impacts and coping strategies’.

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61 Marfurt personal communication in December 2020.

62 Chrispin R. Matenga, ‘Outgrowers and livelihoods: the case of Magobbo smallholder block farming in Mazabuka district in Zambia’, Journal of Southern African Studies 43, 3 (2017), 551–66.

63 Vera Rocca, The gendered implications of the expansion in commercial sugarcane production: a case study of contract farming in Magobbo, Zambia. The Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (Ottawa, Ontario, 2014).

64 See older literature on peasant–nomadic relations: R. Moorehead, ‘Changes taking place in common-property resource management in the Inland Niger Delta of Mali’, in F. Berkes ed., Common Property Resources (London, 1989), 256–72; C. Fay, ‘Sacrifices, Prix Du Sang “Eau Du Maître”: fondation Des Territoires De Pêche Dans Le Delta Central Du Niger (Mali)’, Cahiers des sciences humaines 25 (1989), 1–2; G. Fokou, ‘Tax payments, democracy and rent seeking administrators: common-pool resource management, power relations and conflicts among the Kotoko, Musgum, Fulbe and Arab Choa in the Waza Logone Floodplain (Cameroon)’, in Tobias Haller ed., Disputing the floodplains: institutional change and the politics of resource management in African floodplains (Leiden, 2010), 121–69; P. Meroka, ‘Ujamaa-policies, open access and differential collective action: common-pool resource management, institutional change and conflicts in the Rufiji floodplain (Tanzania)’, in Tobias Haller ed., Disputing the floodplains: institutional change and the politics of resource management in African floodplains (Leiden, 2010), 245–300; Haller, The contested floodplain; Tobias Haller, ‘Managing the commons with floods: the role of institutions and power relations for water governance and food resilience in African floodplains’, in T. Ostegard ed., Water and food – Africa in a global context (Uppsala/London, 2016).

65 Haller et al., ‘Large-scale land acquisition as commons grabbing’; Gerber and Haller, ‘The drama of the grabbed commons’.

66 Tobias Haller and H. Van Dijk, ‘Conflicts, security and marginalization: institutional change of the pastoral commons in a ‘glocal’ world’, Scientific and Technical Review 35, 2 (2016), 3–13; Haller, ‘Institution shopping and resilience grabbing’.

67 Gerber and Haller, ‘The drama of the grabbed commons’; Haller, Ngutu and Käser eds., ‘Does commons grabbing lead to resilience grabbing?’.

68 Sam Jones and Inge Tvedten, ‘What does it mean to be poor? Investigating the qualitative-quantitative divide in Mozambique’, World Development 117 (2019), 153–66.

69 Jones and Tvedten, ‘What does it mean to be poor?’.