The issue of property rights in land has taken central stage in research in institutional economics regarding developing countries. In the African context, numerous studies have dealt with the individualization and commodification of customary land rights. The issue of intra-family land rights tends however to remain a black box, regarding the content of the bundle of rights and duties, the identification of the right holders and the transfers of rights within the family. Drawing from the insights of institutional economics as well as economic and legal anthropology, this paper presents a conceptual framework to rigorously explore the issue of land rights through an economic ethnography.
Questions about land markets are central to development policy, as underlined recently in the 2008 World Development Report (World Bank 2007: 9). In particular, markets in which land rights are transferred on a temporary or permanent basis are seen as playing a key role in the redistribution of land to more efficient users, thus increasing productivity and employment. In this view, any negative effects attributed to land markets, notably in terms of inequity and landlessness, result from failures in other markets, especially credit and insurance markets (Deininger and Feder 2001; de Janvry et al. 2001; World Bank 2003). In Africa, until late in the twentieth century it was these negative effects, and a perception of land as being relatively abundant due to low population densities in many parts of the continent, that influenced policy makers' views. Consequently, land markets received relatively little attention in development policy, except, as exemplified in an earlier issue of this journal (Shipton and Goheen 1992), as a means of securing credit flows for agricultural development. Over the past two decades, however, a wave of proposals for land tenure reform in many African countries (Toulmin and Quan 2000; Berry 2002; World Bank 2003) has raised questions about land markets as a means of allocating land that have profound political and economic implications, rarely addressed by previous research. This collection of articles provides an opportunity to explore the nature of land markets in Africa. 1 EMERGENCE AND DYNAMICS OF LAND MARKETS IN AFRICA In African contexts, the question of land markets is commonly framed by an analysis of how customary systems of land tenure have
[eng] The land lease market in an african ontext. a case study from Côte d'Ivoire - Based on an in-depth and long-run empirical investigation, this paper analyzes the land lease market in a village located in Lower Côte d'Ivoire. The first part of the paper deals with the conditions of emergence and development of contractual practices. It highlights the dramatic rise of the land tenancy market induced by the introduction of pineapple cultivation and a strong immigration flow, and it shows that this market is structured through a clear dichotomy between Burkinabé tenants and Ivorian landowners. The second part of the paper explores the issue of the enforcement of contractual arrangements, showing that the informal character of the contracts does not hamper the lease market dynamics. The last section deals with the incidence of the tense inter-ethnic relationships on tenancy practices and with the project of some actors to provoke an ethnic segmentation of the lease market by refusing to lease land out to Burkinabé pineapple growers or by restricting their contractual choice. [fre] À partir d'une investigation empirique réalisée dans la durée, cet article propose une analyse des conditions de développement et du fonctionnement du marché du faire-valoir indirect dans un village de basse Côte d'Ivoire, selon trois lignes directrices. La première traite des conditions d'émergence et de développement des pratiques contractuelles agraires, en faisant apparaître l'essor remarquable du marché locatif induit par l'introduction de la culture de l'ananas et une forte immigration, ainsi qu'une forte dichotomie, sur ce marché, entre des tenanciers burkinabé et des propriétaires fonciers ivoiriens. La seconde explore la question de l'exécution des engagements contractuels en montrant que le caractère informel des pratiques contractuelles ne nuit en rien au dynamisme de ce marché. La dernière évoque l'incidence, sur les pratiques contractuelles, des relations inter-ethniques tendues et du projet de certains acteurs d'aller vers une segmentation ethnique du marché du FVI en cessant de louer des terres aux Burkinabé.
Varia La politique d'accès à la propriété privée des terres mises en valeur en zones arides en Algérie. Éléments de discussion
[eng] Whereas the economics of agrarian contracts is rooted in the contractual paradigm, this paper offer a conceptualization of agrarian contracts as «composite» institutional arrangements, with contractual, conventional and regulatory dimensions. The theoretical and methodological implications of this conceptualization are explored. The paper focuses more specifically on the conventional dimension of agrarian contracts, with the illustration of sharecropping arrangements in Mexico. [fre] Alors que l'économie des contrats agraires s'inscrit dans le paradigme contractualiste, cet article propose de conceptualiser les contrats agraires comme des arrangements institutionnels « composites », aux dimensions contractuelle, conventionnelle et réglementaire, ce qui n'est pas sans implications théoriques (recours à un certain éclectisme) et méthodologiques (légitimation d'une démarche comprehensive). Une attention plus particulière est portée à la dimension conventionnelle des contrats agraires, illustrée au travers du contrat de métayage dans le contexte mexicain.
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