Landholding System Research Articles

Biochemical correlates of personality dimensions in hyperthyroid patients

Based on government statistics and interviews with villagers across Malawi this article argues that customary matrilineal and patrilineal land tenure systems serve to weaken security of land tenure for some family members as well as obstructing the creation of gender-neutral inheritance of lands. Data from the National Census of Agriculture and Livestock 2007and the 2008 Population and Housing Census are used to characterize marriage systems and landholding patterns of local communities. Marriage systems correspond to customary land-tenure patterns of matrilineal or patrilineal cultures. The differences between the two ways of land holding represent a challenge for land reforms aimed at unifying rules for land tenure and land devolution. Drawing on an analogy of the resilience of the patrilineal land holding system in Norway, we argue that it will be difficult to remove the preferential rights of lineage members directly. We recommend that, instead of creating a unified national system, existing land rights should be formally recognized and circumscribed by fair procedures. A well-designed landholding system should aim to ease the transitions of diverse customary tenure systems towards the requirements of a modern large-scale society.

Joint Family Households and Rural Notables in 19th-Century Egypt

During the past thirty years, the study of the family in European history has developed with a strong comparative emphasis. In contrast, the study of the family in Middle East history has hardly begun, even though the family is assumed to have had a major role in “the structuring of economic, political, and social relations,” as Judith Tucker has noted. This article takes up the theme of the family in the economic, political, and social context of 19th-century rural Egypt. Its purpose is, first of all, to explicate the prevailing joint household formation system in relation to the system of landholding, drawing upon fatwas and supporting evidence. Second, it argues that rural notable families in particular had a tendency to form large joint households and that this was related to the reproduction and enhancement of their economic and political status. Specifically, the maintenance of a joint household appears to have been a way of avoiding the fragmentation of land through inheritance. After the middle of the 19th century, when it appeared that the coherence and durability of the joint family household were threatened, the notables sought to strengthen it through legislation. Their involvement in the law reform process contradicts the progressive, linear model of social and legal change that is often applied in 19th-century Egyptian history.

The Largest Amount of Good: Quaker Relief in Ireland, 1654-1921.

The Largest Amount of Good is the first full account of Quaker relief operations in Ireland and of the evolution of the Quakers' thinking on the purposes and limitations of philanthropy and the responsibility of the state in disaster. Helen Hatton describes how the Quakers rejected orthodox economic and philanthropic theory and, without seeking profit for themselves, provided grants and unguaranteed loans to develop and revitalize Irish agriculture, fisheries, and industry. They also used publicity and political pressure to push for reform of the land-holding system. Although the power of the landowners was too entrenched to be overcome entirely, the Quakers' contribution to Ireland, Hatton demonstrates, is unquestionable. The growth of the Quaker relief service, from mutual help in the seventeenth century to an institution of international standing, has been accompanied by the gradual embodiment of their principles in the direction of the Society. Their work in the Great Irish Famine marked a turning point at which the procedures they had evolved inchoately over two centuries were formulated into a methodology that is accepted today as the basis for relief and Third World development.

Land in African Agrarian Systems

Land in African Agrarian Systems argues that proposals for sweeping changes in African agricultural land tenure are misconceived. Colonial administrators, African elites, and foreign aid donors have historically viewed the variety of indigenous landholding systems as obstacles to increased agricultural production and to economic progress in general, believing that only private land ownership will provide the investment security necessary for agricultural efficiency. This volume contends that privatisation is not the panacea for Africa's agrarian ills, and that any solutions must take into account critical social dynamics that influence how productive resources are acquired, used, contested and underutilised. Editors Thomas J. Bassett and Donald E. Crummey bring together specialists with a variety of perspectives on land tenure issues throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Whether focusing at the level of household, community or nation, these case studies describe how land access, control, and management are embedded in social, political and economic structures that fluctuate and change over time. They examine these embedded systems closely to illuminate the relationship between landholding patterns and agricultural output, stressing throughout that land tenure is a political process. The contributors, an international group of scholars in the areas of land tenure, geography, African studies, anthropology, history and political science, call for pragmatism and respect for the flexibility of indigenous tenure systems, while also addressing the complicated issues of state intervention, socio-economic differentiation, and the social relations of production. By looking at the social and political processes behind the struggles over productive resources, Land in African Agrarian Systems aims to advance the debate over the land question and agricultural performance in Africa, and to counter the arguments of the powerful forces pushing for privatisation. Land in African Agrarian Systems advances the debate over the land question and agricultural performance in Africa, and counters the arguments of the powerful forces pushing for privatisation.

Change and Continuity in Chinese Local History: The Development of Hui-chou Prefecture, 800 to 1800

This book examines one of the most important problems concerning Chinese civilization - how was the pattern of stability and continuity of Chinese society and economy achieved and maintained from approximately 800 to 1800. It uses the results of detailed, specialized research about the Chinese landholding system, marketing patterns, the role of the extended family therein, taxation and non-elite social groups in one specific locale to answer questions that historians of any civilization ask about the structure and functioning of a given society. The author has investigated the development of the Hui-chou community over a 1,000 year period by concentrating on six grand questions, each answered by one chapter. The answers to these questions, as given in this work, show that 'stability' is a dynamic concept. 'Continuity' in Hui- chou is the result of the 'changes' in population growth, commercialization, and class differentiation acting in concert over the long term.

Debts and trespasses: land, mortgages, and the ancestors in western Kenya

AbstractAgricultural programme planners have commonly assumed that, to adopt new crops and inputs, small-scale farmers need financial loans, and that private land titles help them to borrow by providing a form of collateral for mortgages. The experience of the over 2 million Luo people and others in Kenya shows how inappropriate this theory can be in a tropical African context.With a land-holding system based on patriliny, the hosting of in-laws, and other principles, Luo tend to live among kin. They continue to justify land claims largely by labour, by the presence of ancestral graves, and by the group membership these represent. These patterns persist despite individual titling by the government since the 1950s. Financial institutions trying to foreclose on defaulters, and buyers trying then to move on to those lands, face stiff social a~hd political resistance, sometimes violent. The government land register obsolesces, and double-dealing proliferates. The mortgage system breaks down.Other problems in exogenous finance are legion. Credit means debt. It also means patronage, at international, national, or local levels. Neither public nor private financial institutions have overcome the great cultural, political, or pragmatic difficulties of lending to small farmers for staple food cropping or most other farm activities. These people have important debts and obligations of their own already, some quite subtle and some long-term. The promise of more loans, the most commonly cited justification for freehold tenure, proves largely illusory in western Kenya, as in many other rural parts of tropical Africa. Aid strategies based on saving and investment, and on non-financial intervention, hold more promise.RésuméCeux qui ont établi la planification agricole ont assumé de facon générate que, pour adopter les nouvelles cultures et ressources, les fermiers à petite échelle ont besoin de prêts financiers, et que le titre de propriétaire leur permet d'emprunter en constituant une sorte d'engagement pour une hypothéque. L'exemple du peuple Luo de plus de deux millions et des autres au Kenya, montre que cette théorie n'est pas due tout appropriee dans le contexte d'une Afrique tropicale.En raison d'un systeme foncier basé sue l'héritage père-fils, le recueillement des belles-families, et d'autres principes, les Luo ont tendance à vivre en communaute familiale. Us continuent à justifier leurs demandes de terres essentiellement par leur travail effectué, par la présence des tombes ancestrales, et par l'appartenance au groupe que celles-ci représentent. Ces modèles persistent, même depuis que le gouvemement a attribué des titres de propriété individuels à partir des années 1950. Les institutions financières qui tentent de saisir les débiteurs, et les acheteurs qui essaient de prendre possession de ces terres, se heurtent à une résistance ferme à la fois sociale et politique, et parfois même violente. Le registre des terres du gouvemement tombe en désuetude, et le procédé du double-jeu prolifère. Le système de l'emprunt s'effondre.Les autres problèmes en finance exogène sont multiples. Le credit est un signe de dette. II signifie aussi le patronage, aux niveaux international, national, ou local. Aucunes institutions financières publiques ou privées n'ont pu surmonter les grandes difficultés culturelles, politiques ou pragmatiques pour prêter à de petits fermiers pour la production alimentaire de base ou la plupart des autres activités de la ferme. Ces gens ont déjà leurs propres dettes de reconnaissance, à plus ou moins long terme. La promesse d'emprunts supplémentaires, ce qui est le plus regulièrement utilisé pour justifier la propriété fonciére libre, se revèle être fortement illusoire dans le Kenya de l'ouest, comme dans beaucoup d'autres régions de l'Afrique tropicale. Les stratégies d'aides basées sur l'épargne et l'investissement, ainsi que sur des interventions non financieres donnent plus d'espérances.

Land and Society in Early Scotland

This very substantial book follows up Dr Dodgshon's numerous papers on various aspects of land and society in Scotland. The author believes that the time is ripe for a general synthesis and he therefore produces a thorough review covering a long period of history from the earliest times right up to the 'Improving Movement' in the late eighteenth century. The last 200 years are omitted from the study on the grounds that the modern aspects of the relationship are already relatively well endowed with literature. Particular attention is given to the origins and evolution of farming townships and the landholding system, with reference to both Lowland and Highland areas. Chapters are organized on a chronological basis. Relatively brief studies of Prehistory and the Early Medieval period are followed by exhaustive investigations on the period 1100-1650 which form the core of the book, with separate chapters for territorial organization, feudal society, the role of the farming township and township changes. The book is rounded off with regional studies covering the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and relating to the lowland areas of the south and east and, by contrast, the Highlands and Islands. Terminal dates for these studies rightly vary from 1760 in the Lowlands to 1780 in the Highlands on the grounds that the Improving Movement was well advanced in the south by 1760, whereas in the far north and west the perceptive observer 20 years later would appreciate the urgency of change while still finding himself 'amidst a society whose traditions and institutions had matured over the centuries'. In a brief review it is impossible to elaborate in any detail the vigorous effort of the author to explain (often with refreshing originality) as well as describe both the patterns and institutions of the Scottish countryside. But clearly a very formidable amount of documentary material as well as secondary literature has been built into this work which will surely be of permanent value to historians, including economic historians and historical geographers, who are interested either in Scotland alone or anxious to build the Scottish experience into a wider perspective. At the same time it is evident that Dr Dodgshon demands commitment and concentration from his readers: the very concise narrative unsupported by abstracts, summaries and even by a conclusion will perhaps make it difficult for the book to reach a really wide readership. And geographers may feel that the amount of illustrative material is disappointingly modest for a book of such value and importance. DAVID TURNOCK

Work parties, wages, and accumulation in a Voltaic village

This paper attempts to determine the full significance of labor flows between independent farming units in West Africa in order to evaluate the possibilities of accumulation in traditional African farming and the implications of such accumulation for local-level stratification. Three forms of agricultural labor–house-hold, wage, and cooperative-are compared with respect to their cost to the farmer: (1) Household labor and wage labor may lead to the growth of the farming unit; (2) Cooperative labor, while it allows for a transfer of value in the initial stages of growth, becomes very expensive as the operation of the farmer expands; (3) Farmers from outside the village, operating with more capital, take greater advantage of wage labor and household labor and increase their capacity for wealth accumulation. The mechanism of differential access to the cheaper sources of labor probably existed in the past as well, but the customary landholding system, which ensures a farm to all household heads, has limited the stratifying effects of differential access by preventing the formation of a rural proletariat. [economic anthropology, cooperative labor, agriculture, West Africa, stratification]

LANDHOLDING CHANGES,KINSHIP NETWORKS AND CLASS TRANSFORMATION IN RURAL IRELAND: A CASE-STUDY FROM COUNTY TIPPERARY

Much of the literature on the familistic system of landholding in Ireland has suffered both from a western small-farming bias and a lack of 3 historical perspective. This paper seeks to reconstruct the patterns and processes by which the landholding system of one Co. Tipperary parish — located within a more complex ecological zone and with a more diversified social structure — has been reproduced and transformed over the past two centuries. The study is situated in the context of the general processes of Irish agricultural development since the seventeenth century which has seen increasing levels of commercialisation and significant shifts in both the size of holdings and in patterns of commodity production. Given the complex ecological, economic, class, kinship and urban-rural relationships involved, an attempt is made to examine the dialectic between the more general processes of economic and social change and the particular adaptive strategies utilised by different social groups in the parish to surviv...

Patterns of Landownership in Gaelic Monaghan in the Late Sixteenth Century

The purpose of this paper is to examine the pattern of landholding in Monaghan as it is reflected in the 1591 and 1606 inquisitions, to focus especially on the function of balybetagh in the Gaelic landholding system and to fit the resulting pattern of sept lands into the general framework of landownership as it operated in Gaelic Ireland in the late sixteenth century.

19世紀後半のエジプト土地・税制度

19世紀後半のエジプト土地・税制度

The evolution of urbanization in medieval Ireland

In Ireland, relatively little research has been carried out into the influence during the medieval period of the Anglo-Normans upon the evolution of urbanization. This paper presents a model (which primarily operates at a regional scale), the purpose of which is to explain interrelationships between the evolutionary processes operating in the early medieval period. It is argued that a settlement's relationship to a stratified land-holding system determined the operation of locational and temporal constraints, varying combinations of which influenced the functional development of urban settlements. Evidence supporting the validity of the model is presented and discussed.

Crop‐sharing economics in mandatory Palestine — part I

The first part of this article showed that crop division in Mandatory Palestine incorporated two superimposed principles of tenure. The first of these was the crop-sharing compact between the traditionally acknowledged factors of production that shared in the produce: land, seed, ploughing stock and labour. In Northern Samaria both capital factorsseed and ploughing stock-were contributed by one party, who was said to have been awarded the shadd or cultivation. In other words, he was the farmer. The second principle of tenure was the muzara'a or co-cultivation compact between landowner and cultivator. In this compact the cultivator (the farmer) represented the other factors of production as far as the landowner was concerned, and assigned him his rent-share of the crop. Only as a second step was the rest of the crop divided among the other factors of production: and here the farmer represented the landlord. All in all, the farmer constituted the link between the two compacts and the linchpin of the landholding system. Accordingly, it is in terms of where the capital came from under each form of tenure, that we have found it most productive to visualize agrarian institutions and to follow the evolution of the land system in this article. We then classified the forms of tenure in Northern Samaria under the Mandate in descending order of involvement in farming on the part of the landowner: (a) cropping: the landowner retained the capital (the stock) the labour being performed by croppers; (b) joint-farming (partnership in the shadd): the landowner, who owned the stock, appointed a villager to operate the farm, made over a share in the stock to him, debited him its value, and split with him the crop share due to the seed and to the ploughing stock under the crop-sharing compact. The operator, whom we shall call jointfarmer, could either perform the labour himself or take on croppers; (c) share-rent farming: the landowner provided only the land, the farmer supplying the whole capital. The farmer in turn could, if he wished, take on joint-farmers or croppers or sub-farm out the land; (d) tenancy, in which cash replaced the share-rent. We were able to analyse crop division procedures on the basis of the accounts of Nazmi Hajj Tawfeeq 'Abdul Hadi who owned extensive lands both in the hill village of 'Arrabeh in Northern Samaria and in the lowland settlement of Zar'een in the Plain of Esdraelon. We learned from them that Nazmi awarded the croppers (crop-sharing labourers) a much larger part of his share of the crop than did Nazmi's joint-farmers. This differential persisted until the mid-1930's when the croppers apparently secured its elimination-again, at the expense of Nazmi, not of his joint-farmers. We also saw that while in principle the joint-farming form of association

The Rape of the Peasantry: Latin America's Landholding System.

The Rape of the Peasantry: Latin America's Landholding System.

The Rape of the Peasantry: Latin America's Landholding System.

The Rape of the Peasantry: Latin America's Landholding System.

The Rape of the Peasantry: Latin America’s Landholding System

The Rape of the Peasantry: Latin America’s Landholding System

The Debate on Precapitalist Relationships in China in the 1920s and 1930s

The problem of China's social system, which was intimately associated with the future prospects for Chinese society, was, even in the nineteenth century, a subject for debate between early reformers and conservatives, and at the beginning of the twentieth century, between supporters of Sun Yat-sen and liberal constitutionalists. In 1919-1920, at a time of acute ideological struggle in China, a lively discussion developed over the ching-t'ien system (the system of communal landholding in ancient China), a question seemingly archaic and remote from political life. The answer to the question of what the ching-t'ien system was would essentially mean solution of the problem of the character of the social system of ancient China: was society in ancient China of a primitive-communal type or of a class nature? And, if the latter, then precisely what kind?

Study of a Cambodian Village

This paper is based on unfinished field-work in Cambodia during two periods in 1965 and 1966; the field-work was originally planned for thirteen months but due to various circumstances was limited to ten months in the country, and of these only five months were spent within the district and three months in the hamlet described below. As no modern anthropological studies about the area had been published before I left for Cambodia I was not sure what to expect and intended to concentrate for the start on kinship and the system of landholding. But I became progressively more interested in the role of the village monastery, in particular its continued, though changed importance within the national educational system. First, however, I shall describe the area and the community studied. Cambodia lies in the Indo-Chinese peninsula between Thailand in the west, Laos in the north and Vietnam in the east (Fig. 1). It covers 181,000 km2 (70,000 sq.miles), but about half this area consists of forests sparsely populated by various tribes. According to the 1961 census there were then 5,800,000 inhabitants in the country, giving average density of 32 persons per 1 km2 (Tan-Kim-Huon, p. 46) (83 persons per square mile). According to Delvert about 90 per cent of the inhabitants live in about one-third of the total area, in the plains along the main rivers and lakes (Delvert, p. 21). Though at least 80 per cent of the population are agriculturists, only about 25 per cent of all cultivable land, that is about one-tenth of all land, is actually under cultivation (Steinberg, p. 25). The climate is, in the greater part of the inhabited area, relatively pleasant, the temperature moving mostly between 23?C and 32?C, and the humidity not being excessive as rain falls mostly on the mountains due to the action of foehn (Khiou-Bonthonn). Yet the streams bring the monsoon rainfall to the fields. Over a third of the plains is under water every rainy season (Delvert, p. 83); this overflow is full of fish while it lasts and leaves rich alluvial deposits when it recedes. One ofthe three most important provinces is Kompong Cham. It covers 9490 km2 and has 820,000 inhabitants, with average density of 65 inhabitants per 1 km2, but the density is much higher on the river banks?about 418 inhabitants per 1 km2 (Tan-Kim-Huon, p. 69)?and that is where our village lies. I shall call the village Khum (which is Khmer for village). Khum is the chief place of one of the twelve districts of the province and the village area comprises 1956 ha.1 Of this land 83 per cent is privately owned, less than 1 per cent is royal land, 1 per cent is monastery land, 1 per cent belongs to the village community and 12 per cent belongs to the state. Only land belonging to a monastery is inalienable (Fig. 2). Privately owned land occupies 1635 ha and is divided into 6051 plots. The village office records give the number of inhabitants of the village as 4543 and these live on 606 house-sites (according to the cadastral records) and in 1460 houses (according to the village office records). Table 1 gives probably a fair idea of the relative sizes

The Landholding System of Colonial Chile

The Landholding System of Colonial Chile

The Landholding System of colonial Chile

The Landholding System of colonial Chile