The Changing Nature(s) of Land:
Property, Peasants and Agricultural Production in a Global World 

This class is part of an Andrew H. Mellon Sawyer Seminar that will run through 2007-2008. Class meetings will alternate between the traditional-style seminar and working group meetings open to the public. The theme for the seminar generally is the way in which contemporary development has been shaped by political and cultural economies of the land – or, the way in which people, communities and societies have negotiated access to, rights over, and use of the land. This semester, we will specifically focus on property and agrarian politics (see below). We will read classic and contemporary literature in: political economy, property theory, critical Development Studies, legal geography and anthropology, social movement studies, and agrarian studies. During working group meetings, an invited guest will present a paper for discussion.

Our two themes this semester are, in more detail: 

1) Power and Property Rights: 21^st Century Land Reforms.  Perhaps the most important element of the changing nature of land is the way in which notions and norms of property have been re-worked.  The late twentieth century witnessed the largest re-distribution of land titles in modern history with the de-collectivization of common property and state farms in Eastern Europe, China and Mexico.  The push to privatize property echoes the emphasis on individual rights, juridical equality, and state withdrawal that characterizes neo-liberal globalization more broadly and has important consequences for national development, household provisioning, and the construction of political subjects.

2) Locating Agrarian Publics: Trans-National Peasant Movements and Mobilization.  At the same time, new grassroots actors in countries as diverse as Brazil, India, and South Africa have mobilized to demand radical changes in their relationship to property and the land.  Rural workers, small farmers, squatters, sharecroppers, and even the urban poor have risen to the forefront of massive counter-globalization struggles demanding land-to-the-tiller reforms reminiscent of the 1960s.  Constituted in the interstices of colonial and post-colonial development policies, these actors are demanding alternative property regimes, new mechanisms of food sovereignty, and sustainable forms of development.

Across different countries and regions, we will work through spatial and historical comparisons, asking questions such as: what relationships exist between the property enclosures of 18 century England and the mass de-collectivization of state property in Eastern Europe over the past twenty years?  Why have populist calls for a return to the land been present in every century and every region of this modern industrial age?  What threads run through Progressive Era concerns over Pure Food in the United States and heated calls for organic, sustainable, and slow food production and consumption today?  How do gender, class, and customary laws interact with the social and economic forces of globalization to create new geographies of power and exclusion? 

Mechanics:

1) The layout of the seminar:

The seminar will be divided into three different types of meetings: class meetings, during which we will read theoretical material pertaining to the topic of property and mobilization; working group meetings, during which we will focus on one or two papers presented by local faculty and students; and, finally, two mini-conferences, one on property and one on mobilization. 

For the working group meetings, papers will be distributed electronically at least one week prior to the meeting. They will also be available in hard copy at UCIS, the University Center for International Studies. Papers for each meeting will usually include one work-in-progress written by a seminar participant. The meetings will be opened by a graduate student enrolled in the class who will present a prepared set of comments, after which general questions and comments will be addressed to the author. The author will have a chance to respond after at least one half hour has passed.  

The intensive two-day workshops will cap the working group meetings on each theme. Speakers will include outside invited guests as well as internal seminar participants. Speakers will give public presentations and address issues raised by seminar participants during the working group meetings.

1) POWER AND PROPERTY RIGHTS: 21^ST CENTURY LAND REFORMS

Readings:

Rose, Carol M. (1994) Property and Persuasion: Essays on the History, Theory and Rhetoric of Ownership (Westview Press), Introduction and part one, pp. 1 – 46. (complete book available at: http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/Property_and_Persuasion_Carol_M_Rose.pdf)

Note: there is a fair bit of reading for next week because we didn’t want to overload here – it might be a good idea to get started!

Optional Reading:

2. August 28 (CLASS): From Propriety to Property to Theft: Theoretical Perspectives

Readings:

Thompson, E.P (1993) “Custom, Law, and Common Right” in Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (New York: The New Press, 1993), 97-184.

Proudhon, Pierre Joseph. What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government (Chapter Three on "Labor as the Efficient Cause of the Domain of Property").

MacPherson, C.B. 1983. Property: Mainstream & Critical Positions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Chapter 2 “John Locke: Of Property” pp. 15-27; Chapter 3 “Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality, extract from Rousseau on “The Origin of Inequality” reprinted, 29-37; Chapter 4 “Jeremy Bentham: Security and Equity of Property” pp. 39-58; Chapter 5 “Karl Marx: Bourgeois Property and Capitalist Accumulation” pp. 59-74.

Rose, Carol M. (1994) Property and Persuasion: Essays on the History, Theory and Rhetoric of Ownership (Westview Press), part two, pp. 47-103. (Online)

Optional reading:

Locke, John. Second Treatise on Government, Chapter 5: Of Property. (Online)

Blomley, Nicholas (2007) “Making private property: enclosure, common right and the work of hedges,” Rural History 18(1): 1-21 (Available at: http://www.sfu.ca/geography/people/faculty/Faculty_sites/NickBlomley/documents/books/NB%20rural%20history.pdf)

Engels, Friedrich. The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. Selections (complete text online at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm)

3. September 4 (CLASS): From Propriety to Property to Theft: Colonial Encounters

Readings:

Macpherson, C.B. (1975) “Capitalism and the Changing Concept of Property” in H.E. Hallam et al, eds. Feudalism, Capitalism and Beyond. Canberra: ANU Press, pp. 105-124.

Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1-40

Cole Harris, “How Did Colonialism Dispossess? Comments from an Edge of Empire” (2004) 94 Annals of the Association of American Geographers 165-182

Guha, Ranajit. (1996) A Rule of Property: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement. Durham: Duke University Press. Introduction.

4. September 11 (WG): Joseph Bryan

5. September 18 (CLASS): On the Various Tragedies of Property

Discussants: Brenda, Sindhu and Zoe

Readings (commons I):

Hardin, Garrett. 1968 . “The Tragedy of the Commons” Science 162: 1243-1248.

Ostrom, Elinor. 1991. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective. Chapter1 “Reflections on the Commons” pp 1-28

Lu, Flora (2006) "The Commons in an Amazonian Context," in Social Analysis 50(3): 187-194.

Rose, Carol M. (1994) Property and Persuasion: Essays on the History, Theory and Rhetoric of Ownership (Westview Press), part three, pp. 103-197.

Michael A. Heller, “The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in Transition from Marx to Markets” (1998) 111 Harv. L. Rev. 621.

Readings (commons II):

Hardt, Michael (n.d.) Common Property (at: http://www.k3000.ch/becreative/texts/text_4.html)

Mitchell, Don and Lynn A. Staeheli, (2005) “Turning Social Relations into Space: Property, Law and the Plaza of Sante Fe, New Mexico” 30 Landscape Research 361-378.

Optional Readings:

Ostrom, Elinor (2003) “How Types of Goods and Property Rights Jointly Affect Collective Action,” Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 15, No. 3, 239-270.

Agarwal, Arun and Elinor Ostrom (2001) “Collective Action, Property Rights, and Decentralization in Resource Use in India and Nepal” Politics and Society 29(4): 485-514 (available online at: http://pas.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/29/4/485.pdf)

Turner, Matthew D. (1999) “Conflict, Environmental Change, and Social Institutions in Dryland Africa: Limitations of the Community Resource Management Approach” Society & Natural Resources 12: 643-657.

Singer, Joseph. 2000. Entitlement: The Paradoxes of Property. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1-18.

8. October 5 (WG): David Salisbury (note new day and time! THIS IS FRIDAY, 3:30 - 5:00)

9. October 9 (CLASS) Gendering Property

Discussants: Holly, Cara and Tara

Readings:

Agarwal, Bina. 1994. A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 1: Land Rights for Women: Making the Case. Chapter 2: Conceptualizing Gender Relations.

Shahra Razavi. 2003. Special Issue: Agrarian Change, Gender and Land Rights Journal of Agrarian Change 3 (1 & 2).

Fortmann, Louise, Camille Antinori and Nontokozo Nabane. 1997. “Fruits of their Labors: Gender, Property Rights and Tree Planting in Two Zimbabwe Villages” Rural Sociology (available at: http://cnr.berkeley.edu/fortmann/FruitsoftheirLabors.pdf)

Deere, C.D. and C. R. Doss. 2006. “The Gender Asset Gap: What do We Know and Why Does it Matter?” Feminist Economics 12 (1-2): 1-50.

Optional Readings:

Hamilton, Sarah. 2002. “Neoliberalism, Gender and Property Rights in Rural Mexico.” Latin American Research Review 37 (1): 119-143.

Dore, Elizabeth. 2000. “Property, Households, and Public Regulation of Domestic Life: Diriomo, Nicaragua, 1840-1900” in Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux (eds) Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press: 147-171.

10. October 16 (CLASS): Politics, Privatization and (Property) Rights - Eminent Domain in the United States

Discussants: Liz H., Sara S., Scarlet and Cindy

Readings:

Harvey, David (2003) The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (This reading is a selection)

Please skim (read, but read lightly):

 The United States Supreme Court Opinion and Decision on New London vs. Kelo (2005)

The Amicus Brief filed by Jane Jacobs, Urban Sociologist, in support of Petitioners (Kelo et al.)

The Amicus Brief filed by the NAACP, the AARP et al., in support of Petitioners

The Amicus Brief filed by the CATO Institute and Richard Epstein, in support of Petitioners

Optional reading

Kate Green, “Citizens and Squatters: Under the Surfaces of Land Law” in Susan Bright and John Dewar, editors, Land Law: Themes and Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

McCarthy, James (2001) “Environmental Enclosures and the State of Nature in the American West,” In Peluso, N. and M. Watts, eds., Violent Environments. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

October 23 - NO CLASS!

*** 11. October 26-27 (CONFERENCE): Lakshmi Iyer, Mieke Meurs, Angus Wright, Jan French, Angela Cacciaru, Chengri Ding, Joe Kalo.

2) LOCATING AGRARIAN PUBLICS: RURAL POLITICS AND ORGANIZATION 

12. November 6 (WG): Sandy Smith-Nonini Anthropology, Elon and UNC Chapel Hill

13. November 13 (CLASS): Agrarian Mobilization

Discussants: Tim, Tamara, Lisa

Readings (I would recommend reading them in the order listed....)

14. November 20 (WG) Tony Bebbington, Geography, Manchester

15. November 27 (CLASS)

Discussants: Mari and Wendy

Harvey, Neil. 1998.  The Chiapas Rebellion.  Durham, NC: Duke University Press.  “The Right to have Rights,” (pp. 6-36).

Edelman, Marc, 1999.  Peasants against Globalization: Rural Social Movements in Costa Rica.  Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.  Introduction and Conclusion  (pp. 1-41 and 184-211).

Moore, Donald, 1997.  “Remapping Resistance: ‘Ground for Struggle’ and the Politics of Place,” in Geographies of Resistance, edited by Steve Pile and Michael Keith.  New York: Routledge.  (pp. 87-107).

Harvey, David, 1996.  Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference.  Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.  Chapter 8: The Dialectics of Social and Environmental Change (pp. 176-207).

McCarthy, James, 1998.  "Environmentalism, Wise Use and the Nature of Accumulation in the Rural West," in Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millenium, edited by Bruce Braun and Noel Castree.  London: Routledge Press (pp. 126-150).

16. December 7 – 8 (CONFERENCE)