In The Land of the Chiefs : Customary Law, Land Conflicts, and the Role of the State in Peri-Urban Ghana

Ubink, Janine

doi:10.5117/9789087280413

Cited by 62 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 109 publications

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“…Indirect rule did not only empower the chiefs, but they also took advantage of their new found powers to build empires that eroded their accountability to their subjects [3]. On the other hand, the erosion of their chiefly jurisdiction and functions as arbitrators and embodiment of the traditions of a community has been documented in our recent democratic dispensation [3,[8][9][10][11]. Colonization and the prescription of Western models of leasehold and freehold tenure to promote tenure security, agricultural investment and land markets in the colonial and post-colonial administrations also reduced the influence of some of these communal traditional structures and institutions [2,3,[12][13][14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research and publications relevant to this study are about the history of chieftaincy [3,7,15,37], chieftaincy and governance [2,3,[9][10][11]17,23,37], customary land tenure and management [1,[3][4][5]14] and politics and chieftaincy [3,8,13]. Relevant publications with respect to the Jatropha industry in Ghana have been on the effects of large-scale land acquisition on food security and the socio-economic lives of people [23,24,[26][27][28][29]36,[38][39][40][41][42], the rights and commodification of land [14] and conflicts [43].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Chieftaincy Institution in Ghana: Causers and Arbitrators of Conflicts in Industrial Jatropha Investments

Campion

Acheampong

2014

Sustainability

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Large-scale land acquisition in Africa has been the concern and the focus of growing global literature on land grabbing. The upswing in biofuel investments in Ghana led to large-scale land acquisitions by the private sector presided over by chiefs. This research investigates how chiefs, in playing their traditional roles in the acquisition of land and as arbitrators, were, in most instances, the cause and the solution to the ensuing conflicts in the various communities. Data was collected through interviews, use of questionnaires and focus group discussions. Some of the conflict issues include loss of farmlands or other communal lands, disagreements on the land acquisition processes, the quantum and mode of execution of compensation payments and the existence or contents of social responsibility agreements. Furthermore, the use of negotiation, mediation and courts by people in these communities relative to arbitration by chiefs is increasing. The Government of Ghana needs to strengthen the public sector land institutions and put in place stronger and binding mechanisms for resolving disputes arising from large-scale acquisitions of land to cushion the effect of the weakening confidence in the chieftaincy institution.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Chieftaincy Institution in Ghana: Causers and Arbitrators of Conflicts in Industrial Jatropha Investments

Campion

Acheampong

2014

Sustainability

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“…Customary law distinguishes between the allodial title, freeholder title, and various other types of interest over land, thus deviating from the Western notion of individual property (Djokoto & Opoku 2010). The allodial title can be described as the "ultimate authority in land matters" (Kasanga 2003) and is de facto held by the chief, even though some authors have rightly insisted that, traditionally, the chief was not the "holder" of the allodial title, but rather the custodian thereof (Ubink 2008). In any case, the chief is charged with the management of land within the community, e.g.…”

Section: Land Rights In Ghanamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From a legalistic perspective, the reliance of customary law on customs, while being perfectly reasonable, poses several problems of equivocality conditioned by the fact that customs change over time and space, are not recorded in a written form, and lack a designated authority charged with the creation and interpretation of customs (Ubink 2008). As a result, the application of customary law is, more so than that of Anglo-American law, a question of definitions.…”

Section: Internal Inconsistencies and External Pressuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Without assessing the overall impact of this development on the Ghanaian population, this has led to a scarcity of land and aggravated problems of access to land and landlessness for some segments of society, in particular for the rural population in peri-urban areas. For example, the number of inhabitants of Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti Region, has grown by 4.2% per annum since 1960 (Ubink 2008). Hence, the increasing scarcity and valuation of land has created pressures and incentives that were absent at the time when customary law was shaped (Kasanga & Kotey 2001).…”

Section: Internal Inconsistencies and External Pressuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Institutional Environments for Enabling Agricultural Technology Innovations: The Role of Land Rights in Ethiopia, Ghana, India and Bangladesh

Schädler

Gatzweiler

2013

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractLand rights are essential assets for improving the livelihoods of the rural poor. This literature based paper shed light to some land rights issues that are crucial for the effectiveness and sustainability of implementing technological innovations in marginalized rural areas of Ethiopia, Ghana, India and Bangladesh. By analysing country specific land right regimes, this paper aims to understand what institutional conditions might constitute barriers to the effective implementation of technological innovations and how they might be overcome. Land rights issues considered in this paper include public and private ownership of land in Ethiopia, customary and statutory law in Ghana, and gender equality and land rights in India and Bangladesh. A better understanding of institutional barriers for the effective implementation of technological innovations is a precondition for complementing technological with enabling institutional innovations and for improving priority setting, targeting and sequencing in the implementation of productivity increasing development measures.

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Rule and Rupture: State Formation through the Production of Property and Citizenship

Lund

2017

Rule and Rupture

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Christian Lund and how this ought to be the centre of analysis of the formation of political authority. Finally, I provide two concise examples from Ghana and Indonesia. THE ARGUMENT Dynamics of State Formation and Institutional Pluralism Treating the 'state' as a finished product gets in the way of understanding it. The state is always in the making. Political authority is (re-)produced through its successful exercise over an important issue in relation to the social actors concerned. 2 To move beyond the mere incantation of this claim, this Introduction investigates and specifies contracts of recognition as the key dynamic of the constitution of authority, and the chapters which follow describe and demonstrate it. The argument I pursue is that the ability to entitle and disenfranchise people with regard to property, to establish the conditions under which they hold that property-together with the ability to define who belongs and who does not, and to establish and uphold rank, privilege and social servitude in its many forms-is constitutive of state power. Claims to rights prompt the exercise of authority. Struggles over property and citizenship are therefore as much about the scope and constitution of political authority as they are about access to resources and membership of polities. Hence, investigating the social production of property and citizenship enables concrete understanding of the dynamics of authority or state formation. Granted, there are many problematics of government (Rose and Miller, 1992), and not all questions of state formation can be reduced to property and citizenship. Government-or authority-forms around the control over central resources, and in some historical periods, and in some places, key resources may be trading points and routes; they may be 'knowledge' or 'security', or even more abstract sources of wealth. It seems prudent to remain open to different kinds of combinations at all times. Yet, property (especially in land) and citizenship are increasingly such central resources in most societies, and engaging with these two fundamental and substantive questions in terms of their production allows us to traverse a broad series of dynamic questions of how property and citizenship are made. 3 This takes 2. I use public and political authority interchangeably. Public points to the 'not private and not secret' aspect of exercised authority. Political, on the other hand, points to its contentious element. In most cases, both features apply. 3. I draw on a broad literature on state and political authority, property and citizenship, including:

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In The Land of the Chiefs : Customary Law, Land Conflicts, and the Role of the State in Peri-Urban Ghana

Cited by 62 publications

References 109 publications

The Chieftaincy Institution in Ghana: Causers and Arbitrators of Conflicts in Industrial Jatropha Investments

The Chieftaincy Institution in Ghana: Causers and Arbitrators of Conflicts in Industrial Jatropha Investments

Institutional Environments for Enabling Agricultural Technology Innovations: The Role of Land Rights in Ethiopia, Ghana, India and Bangladesh

Rule and Rupture: State Formation through the Production of Property and Citizenship

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