Week 8 Land as Property

1. Week 8Land as Property Dr SupriyaAkerkar

2. Outline of the lecture • Impact of colonial political economy on land rights • Social differentiation: race, class and gender inequalities due to changes in land relations • Transformation in gender and land rights • Main focus on Kikuyu land relations in Kenya

3. Colonization and political economy of land Customary Colonial changes Exclusive ownership and registration of titles or privatization of lands Favoured Patrilineal and male descent Social differentiation and class formation: Local elite manipulation or invention of custom (Terence Ranger) • Communal owned • Several forms of land usage: usufruct, tenancy, rights of women to lands

4. South Asia, land and colonial transformation • Case of Garos in Meghalaya, India: • Garo hills regulation act 1882 • Introduction of wet rice cultivation to traditional Jhumcultivation • Introduction of land titles and privatization while earlier land was communally owned

5. Garos and land rights after colonial and post colonial continuance of policies Customary Contemporary Jhum and wet rice cultivation Gender division of labour: Wet rice: mainly men for cash Jhum: mainly women for food Land Rights: Privatized, class differentiation, male bias Land management: wet rice: husbands, sons; Jhum: husband and wife Inheritance of property: youngest daughter and tendency to gift lands to sons Post marital residence: matrilocal but changing to patri-virilocal • Jhum cultivation • Gender division of labour: Jhum – mainly women Hunting- mainly men Fishing- more men, less women Orchard: only women • Land rights: All clan members equal • Land management: husband and wife • Inheritance of property: Youngest daughter • Post marital residence: matrilocal

6. Case of Kikuyus and land in Kenya • Land in Kikuyu areas: Multiplicity and non-exclusivity of rights to land; communal use of lands • A racial image of an African backwardness led to unwillingness on part of most administrators to recognise a coherent system of land tenure amongst colonized people • Attitude of paternal authoritarianism

7. Colonial political economy of agriculture • Politics of betterment (civilizing mission?): colonial introduction of policies for land ownership and land management • http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/5405609826/sizes/m/in/set-72157625974571006/

8. Racial land distribution or technical land management: The case of Kenya • Crown Lands Ordinance 1915 requiring registration certificate by all males. Africans considered ‘tenants at will’ of the Crown. • Dual policy in Kenya in 1923 • High value crops of Tea and Coffee for European settlers • Exclusive European production of coffee and tea • Local persons: Maize (lower nutritional value) • Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/5405015338/sizes/m/in/set-72157625974571006/

9. Kikuyu social structure and land practices in 1880s • Low social differentiation in 1880 • Kikuyu land practices, allowed mbari or kin corporate to deal with tension between individual and kinship rights over the lands • Uncultivated mbari lands were given to tenants for cultivation • Individuals could migrate out and set up a new mbari

10. Land-mark changes and local unrest • Inquiry by forums organised by colonial state and committee on native land tenure in Kikuyu province in 1929 • Inquiry by Kenya Land Commission 1932-34

11. Land Enquiries • Only male witnesses • Relation between individual, mbari (sub clan) or in corporate rights • Allocated property rights and use or usufruct rights were not considered • Androcentric bias in enquiries • Source:http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/5404419541/sizes/m/in/photostream/

12. Effect of the inquiries • Enquiries used by Kikuyu representatives often clan leaders, and elite to represent rights as originating in Kikuyu kin rather than being heterogeneous in origin, although several forms of land rights existed • Customary rights to land via women were practically ruled out . • Kikuyu customary discourse of ‘kinship’ and Kikuyu identity invented to legitimize land rights of Kikuyu in their struggle against European land acquisition.

13. Effect of the land enquiries • Kikuyu male elders became the interpreters and arbitrators of the tradition. • Allocative rights through male • mbari : created as a symbol of customary legal discourse • http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/5404441879/sizes/m/in/set-72157625974571006/

14. Effect of land enquiries • Accumulation of lands by elites by manipulation of chiefs and male elders. Mackenzie argues • “The mbari, a symbol of kin corporate identity, was recreated as a means of individual accumulation, and to mask a class struggle” • Women’s proprietory interests in lands were now not recognised. In customary land practices, although mbari negotiated land allocation and use, women’s rights over land were secure as they were producers and traders– and rights were then in principle subject to the use rights.

15. Changes in the land rights • Broad Conclusion: • Colonial intervention, and mobilization of selective or invented customary law discourse led to changes in the land economy in Kenya in ways that marginalised women’s earlier land rights and those of poorer land holders. • Do you think women’s right to land is important? Why? • Discuss

16. Land ownership and land management • Changes in land rights were also accompanied by changes in land management practices.

17. Land management in 1880s • 1880: production and environmental sustainability • Land holding was dispersed – some low, high, soil types • Crop rotation, intercropping (insured against complete food failure) • Minimum tillage aiding conservation of soil

18. Gender and Land in pre-colonial times Women in Kikuyu society • Control over subsistence food and participation in political process of the society • Women’s crops: millets, beans and peas, sweet potato, spinach, greens and legumes (high nutritional value, proteins) • Women also traded millets and gained some autonomy. Men in Kikuyu society • Males grew crops such as yams and bananas • Extent to which he could mobilise additional labour for control of more land

19. Women as traders • Older Kikuyu women engaged in long distance trading with Masai • Economic autonomy and control over gains • Even when women gave their produce to husbands/sons for sale, they did not renounce their right to earnings • Picture Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/5404407369/sizes/m/in/set-72157625974571006/

20. New land management practices • Scientific agriculture • New varieties of Maize seeds distributed to improve agricultural production. • Millets termed ‘bird seeds’, seen as inferior to Maize in yield and nutrition • Native Maize replaced with ‘mixed colour’ maize replaced with white colour Maize • Picture source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/5404448833/sizes/m/in/set-72157625974571006/

21. Impact on environmental sustainability • Genetic uniformity : seeds susceptible to drought • Intensive maize cultivation leading to loss of fertility of soil: change in agricultural practices; deep tillage, pure than intercropping • Length of time land is left fallow decreased

22. Maize and social differentiation • Increased production of Maize for urban market, settler farmers. Maize became the main exchange value crop • As land rights were now registered and became individually owned, wage- income through maize became an important means through which land could be purchased. • Picture Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/5405041620/sizes/m/in/set-72157625974571006/

23. Impact on women’s labour and gender relations • Intensification of women’s labour. Due to male outmigration and male wage labour, women also doing traditional men’s work: planting bananas, digging yams • Women working on coffee estates ;less time for their own gardens and farms • Maize trading brought roads, motor transport. Men typically more involved in trading Maize. • Source:http://www.spraguephoto.com/stock-photography-image/6685/Kikuyu-women-turning-soil,-Meru,-Kenya.

24. Forms of gender struggle: Household as a site of struggle • Control of cash from sale of agricultural produce : Continued production and marketing of millet by women

25. Female agency and women’s right to lands • Case of female husbands • Practice of mwendia ruhia

26. Colonial and post colonial land economy • To conclude: • Large scale transformations in women’s rights and social fabric of the colonized societies were induced by colonial land based economies. • Post colonial states have also in many cases continued with gender discriminatory land policies. • ...... Struggle for women’s rights to land continues in most parts of the world.

27. Next lecture • Gandhi, Civil Disobedience and Civil Resistance

28. Thank You