Tenure Relations Research Articles

Introduction: Locating gentrification in the Global East

This special issue, a collection of papers presented and debated at an Urban Studies Foundation-funded workshop on Global Gentrification in London in 2012, attempts to problematise contemporary understandings of gentrification, which is all too often confined to the experiences of the so-called Global North, and sometimes too narrowly understood as classic gentrification. Instead of simply confirming the rise of gentrification in places outside of the usual suspects of North America and Western Europe, a more open-minded approach is advocated so as not to over-generalise distinctive urban processes under the label of gentrification, thus understanding gentrification as constitutive of diverse urban processes at work. This requires a careful attention to the complexity of property rights and tenure relations, and calls for a dialogue between gentrification and non-gentrification researchers to understand how gentrification communicates with other theories to capture the full dynamics of urban transformation. Papers in this special issue have made great strides towards these goals, namely theorising, distorting, mutating and bringing into question the concept of gentrification itself, as seen from the perspective of the Global East, a label that we have deliberately given in order to problematise the existing common practices of grouping all regions other than Western European and North American ones into the Global South.

Reconsidering the links between poverty, international labour migration, and agrarian change: critical insights from Nepal

The role of international labour migration in processes leading to the (re)production of rural poverty in the rural South continues to shape critical academic and policy debate. While many studies have established that migration provides an important pathway to rural prosperity, they insufficiently analyse the profound effects that migration and remittances have on agrarian and rural livelihoods. This article uses the case of rural Nepal, where over half of the households are involved in foreign labour migration, as a ‘window’ to understand the processes shaping how migration effects poverty. The paper analyses how migration generates outcomes across the domains of rural people's changing relationship to land and agriculture, their experience of migration, and rural labour markets to advance our arguments. First, it argues that migration leads to the commodification of land, generating changes in patterns of land uses and tenancy relations. With respect to rural people's engagement with agriculture, migration generates both processes of ‘deactivation’ and ‘repeasantization’. Second, foreign migration offers an exit from poverty for some while also creating processes of deeper impoverishment for others. Third, migration leads to structural changes in rural labour markets, reducing the supply of agrarian labour. Consequently, in contrast to the simplifying ‘narrative’ accounts of a migration pathway out of poverty, this paper concludes that the effects triggered by migration are highly contradictory, providing an exit from poverty when linked to diversification strategies, while engendering rising inequality and rural differentiation.

Fuel poverty from the bottom-up: Characterising household energy vulnerability through the lived experience of the fuel poor

Recent quantitative and qualitative evidence documents a dramatic reduction in average direct UK household energy consumption in the last decade. The ‘fuel poverty gap’ in the UK (average shortfall that fuel poor households experience in affording their energy bills) has also grown substantially in that period. Here we draw on the literature on vulnerability and on recent qualitative interviews with fuel poor households to characterise the experience of energy vulnerability in the UK. Using our qualitative data, we explore energy vulnerability from the point of view of our interviewees. In doing so we identify six challenges to energy vulnerability for the fuel poor: quality of dwelling fabric, energy costs and supply issues, stability of household income, tenancy relations, social relations within the household and outside, and ill health. In analysing these challenges we find that the energy vulnerable have limited agency to reduce their own vulnerability. Further, current UK policy relating to fuel poverty does not take full account of these challenges. Any attempt to address energy vulnerability coherently in the future must engage with structural forces (policies, markets, and recognition) in order to increase household agency for change.

Incentives and Income Distribution in Tenancy Relationships

I analyze a problem of partnership formation between heterogeneous principals and agents, where each partnership is subject to a moral-hazard problem. In a Walrasian equilibrium of the economy, wealthier agents work in more productive lands following a positively assortative matching pattern, since higher wealth has greater marginal effect in high-productivity lands. Consequently, the matches that consist of less wealthy agents are not able to implement the efficient effort and contracts. Agents' share of the match output is in general nonmonotone with respect to initial wealth. If wealth is more unequally distributed than land quality, then the equilibrium share (of the agents) is a monotonically increasing function of wealth.

Enhancement of Land Tenure Relations as a Factor of Sustainable Agricultural Development: Case of Stavropol Krai, Russia

The aim of this paper is to give an overview and analyze the contemporary land tenure relations in Russia in view of their influences on economic viability of agricultural production. The paper investigates progress made toward the development of agricultural land market in economies in transition. The research is made with emphasis on Stavropol Krai, agricultural region in the southern part of Russia. The authors retrospectively address land tenure relations in the region, analyze contemporary tendencies, and discover linkages between land tenure relations and sustainable agricultural development. The later concept is understood here as economic viability of agricultural production. The paper focuses on the potential approaches for resolving specific problem issues in the sphere of sustainable agricultural development through effective land tenure relations. The paper is concluded with the substantiation of methodology of land rent payment, the size of which is made conditional on land productivity and effectiveness of agricultural production.

The impact of corporate governance on employment relations in South Korea: the shareholder versus stakeholder perspectives

This study empirically examined the impact of corporate governance on employment relations outcomes utilizing a comprehensive data set drawn from 214 Korean firms. The study contrasted the stakeholder and shareholder perspectives of corporate governance in investigating the impact of corporate governance on employment relations outcomes. The results showed that the stakeholder corporate governance orientation (as compared to the shareholder orientation) had positive relationships with education/training expense, the level of average employee tenure and industrial relations climate, and had a negative association with number of strikes. Overall, the results implied that the stakeholder orientation of firms led to more beneficial effects for employees and more consensual relations with labor unions than the shareholder orientation did.

The impact of corporate governance on employment relations in South Korea: the shareholder versus stakeholder perspectives

This study empirically examined the impact of corporate governance on employment relations outcomes utilizing a comprehensive data set drawn from 214 Korean firms. The study contrasted the stakeholder and shareholder perspectives of corporate governance in investigating the impact of corporate governance on employment relations outcomes. The results showed that the stakeholder corporate governance orientation (as compared to the shareholder orientation) had positive relationships with education/training expense, average employee tenure and industrial relations (IR) climate, as well as a negative association with number of strikes. Overall, the results implied that the stakeholder orientation of firms led to more beneficial effects for employees and more consensual relations with labour unions than the shareholder orientation did.

Land Trusts and Beginning Farmers’ Access to Land: Exploring the Relationships in Coastal California

This paper examines relationships between beginner farmers and land trusts in coastal California. Set within the context of land consolidation in agriculture and increasing land values, some beginner farmers have created innovative land tenure relationships with land trusts in order to gain access to affordable farmland. To examine the relationships between land trusts and beginning farmers, we ask: how do conservation land trusts and agricultural land trusts view their mission in relation the intersection of conservation and agriculture? Findings suggest there is a spectrum of positions that conservation and agricultural land trusts have taken in regards to the coexistence of agriculture and conservation on their land. The increasingly popular concepts found within the local food movement may be influencing a shift in the portrayal of land trust position and mission. However, differences between how land trusts act internally and how they portray themselves publicly emerged in farmer interviews. While there may be great deal of potential for land trusts to work with beginner farmers and thereby connect a new swath of the public to conservation through agriculture, both land trusts and beginner farmers need to wade carefully into relatively uncharted waters.

Borders of Mutuality, Frontiers of Resistance: Paternalism and Working Identities of Farm Labourers in the Sundays River Valley, South Africa

This article deals with the practice of work on farms in the Sundays River Valley, a farming district located near the city of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Situated on a historical frontier zone where land has been claimed by multiple generations of both farmers and farm workers, I analyse the incidence of paternalism and payment in kind on one particular farm in the district, with particular reference to ostrich work. I point out that paternalism has meaning beyond that of subservience and enslavement, and that working relationships among masters and servants have produced a very rural and conservative ‘Red’ identity among workers, based on historical claims to land and a working knowledge of farming techniques. The article argues that this type of ‘frontier paternalism’ produces ways in which workers can resist working practices on farms, particularly through sustaining ties with kin and maintaining memories of past tenure on farms in the district. Overall, the article argues that the relative recency of tenure relationships in the Sundays River Valley re-orientates the analysis of farm labour beyond subservience, and centralises workers as people with a vested history, culture and identity. These idioms of place provide recourse to even the most temporary and unstable forms of work in the district, since it is within the experience of disruption that the greatest level of resistance is eventually experienced.

Rural Castas, State Projects, and Ethnic Transformation in Western Guatemala, 1800–1821

Nonindigenous, non-Spanish castas were a significant presence in late colonial Central America, yet their lives have remained opaque to historians, particularly in heavily indigenous rural areas such as western Guatemala. Drawing on detailed census correspondence, this article describes casta populations in the Huehuetenango region in the final decades of colonial rule by examining census categorization, patterns of migration, occupations, land tenure, and casta relations with indigenous communities and royal authorities. These data question current assumptions regarding the timing and nature of ethnic transformation among these populations, arguing that the key shift to a generic ladino identity occurred later than previously proposed. They also suggest the need for greater attention to the role of state formation in ethnic change, as the casta population described here repeatedly struggled with and adapted themselves to the identities promoted in state projects during the early nineteenth century, with enduring effects on later ethnic relations.

The Political Economy of Agrarian Labour Relations in Zimbabwe after Redistributive Land Reform

This article examines the reconfiguration of agrarian labour relations in Zimbabwe following extensive land redistribution since 2000. Based on field research, it shows that the new forms of labour utilization that have emerged are structured around new land ownership and material conditions, within a more diversified agrarian economy. The new agrarian structure is characterized by reduced supplies of wage labour, as more of the previously land-short peasants are now self-employed on the land they gained, while part-time wage-labour provision has grown in the differentiated capitalist farms, which have been largely unable to enforce labour tenancy relations. Agrarian politics are increasingly focused on class struggles between capital and labour, in general, and the competition for resources between the different modes of farming.

The Influence of Social Networks on Agricultural Technology Adoption

This paper applies Social Network Analysis (SNA) to the effects of professional collaboration within social networks on farmers’ decision-making behavior when adopting irrigation technology. This paper addresses professional collaboration found in tenure relations, social and professional organizations. The sample consists of 195 fields farmed over a five-year period in southeast Texas by 37 farmers. The analysis suggests that participation in organizations is a key factor influencing adoption of irrigation technology. After initial implementation by central farmers, technology is transferred either through tenant or kinship relationships. Results suggest that ownership-stake is a factor as to whether a farmer participates in organizations.

Inequality of land tenure and revolutionary outcome: An economic analysis of China's land reform of 1946–1952

A paradoxical feature of China's land reform of 1946–1952 is that it was conducted far more radically in the north, where land tenure relations were far less unequal, than in the south where inequality of land tenure was distinctly more acute. That landlords could only be identified in south China was attributable to the sharply more active land rental market there, and the “single-cut” policy of defining the landlords narrowly as a rentier class. We attribute the predominance of an active land rental market in south China to three socioeconomic characteristics: 1) a sharply higher inequality in land distribution, 2) an organization of agriculture whose efficiency required the “unsupervised initiatives” of family labor, and 3) a distinctly higher proportion of “absentee landlords”. Our hypothesis of land rentals being the only variable distinguishing the landlords from the rich peasants and only in south China is strongly supported by empirical evidence.

Living in Non-permanent Accommodation in England: Liminal Experiences of Home

This paper reports research on people who live in housing that is defined as non-permanent by policy makers in England, and focuses on two particular groups: residents of park homes and residential boaters. The paper emphasises how the distinctive environments in which such housing is set may facilitate particular lifestyles, contributing to residents' identities. The notion of liminality is used as a framework to help understand the views of residents, highlighting the diversity of their experiences. Both park home residents and residential boaters ascribed a range of positive qualities to the environments in which they lived, underscored by the perception that the spaces that such accommodation occupied were often associated with leisure. Nevertheless, the nature of tenure relations in both settings potentially leads to vulnerabilities in the way that some people can maintain these lifestyles. These positive and negative facets were reflected in ambivalent feelings towards home both between groups of respondents and within individuals.

Land tenure in the U.S.: power, gender, and consequences for conservation decision making

Land tenure relations have both social and environmental implications, ranging from potential power issues to land stewardship. Drawing upon survey data of landowners collected in the Great Lakes Basin of the U.S., this study builds upon existing research by examining absentee landlords of agricultural land—a vastly understudied but growing category of landowners. By furthering analysis on gender dynamics in the landlord-tenant relationship, the study findings augment Gilbert and Beckley’s (Rural Sociology, 1993) suggestion that subordinate landlord-dominant tenant relationships may be a pattern and contribute to understanding the nuances that co-ownership potentially plays in these relationships.

Regulating Tenancy Relationships in Jordan: Pro-Landlord, Neutral, and Pro-Tenant

AbstractThe legal relationship between landlords and tenants has always been a complex issue. This article analyzes landlord‐tenant legal relationships in Jordan and the extent to which the legal rules are pro-landlord, neutral, or pro-tenant. The analysis will help in providing proposals for reforming the law in a manner that take the interests of all parties involved into account. This article concludes by arguing that legislation on landlord and tenant relations in Jordan is weakened by the conflicting rules in the Civil Code and the Landlord‐Tenant Law.

Forests, food, and fuel in the tropics: the uneven social and ecological consequences of the emerging political economy of biofuels

The global political economy of biofuels emerging since 2007 appears set to intensify inequalities among the countries and rural peoples of the global South. Looking through a global political economy lens, this paper analyses the consequences of proliferating biofuel alliances among multinational corporations, governments, and domestic producers. Since many major biofuel feedstocks – such as sugar, oil palm, and soy – are already entrenched in industrial agricultural and forestry production systems, the authors extrapolate from patterns of production for these crops to bolster their argument that state capacities, the timing of market entry, existing institutions, and historical state-society land tenure relations will particularly affect the potential consequences of further biofuel development. Although the impacts of biofuels vary by region and feedstock, and although some agrarian communities in some countries of the global South are poised to benefit, the analysis suggests that already-vulnerable people and communities will bear a disproportionate share of the costs of biofuel development, particularly for biofuels from crops already embedded in industrial production systems. A core reason, this paper argues, is that the emerging biofuel alliances are reinforcing processes and structures that increase pressures on the ecological integrity of tropical forests and further wrest control of resources from subsistence farmers, indigenous peoples, and people with insecure land rights. Even the development of so-called ‘sustainable’ biofuels looks set to displace livelihoods and reinforce and extend previous waves of hardship for such marginalised peoples.

AGRARIAN LAND TENANCY IN PREWAR JAPAN: CONTRACT CHOICE AND IMPLICATIONS ON PRODUCTIVITY

This paper studies the determinants of agrarian tenancy contract choice and its implication on productivity in prewar Japan. Rapid agricultural growth under extensive tenancy relationships in prewar Japan was achieved with the prevalence of a unique rent reduction contract, which was more efficient than a share tenancy or a pure fixed-rent contract in terms of provision of incentives and risk-sharing. Despite its potential efficiency, a rent reduction contract incurred substantial transaction costs, which may have inhibited its adoption outside Japan. The prevalence of this contract in prewar Japan was likely due to the presence of villages that reduced such costs through informal governance of the private tenancy relationships. We found quantitatively at the village level that the choice of tenancy contract in prewar Iwate prefecture was affected by risk and possibly transaction costs. Furthermore, a sign of Marshallian inefficiency was found at the prefecture level, where the prevalence of tenancy and productivity is negatively correlated and such inefficiency was worse in prefectures with a greater proportion of share tenancy.

Tenurial “competition”, tenure dynamics and the private rented sector

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to re‐appraise the role of the private renting in the housing system drawing on a review of public policies toward the sector in six countries. It re‐examines the adequacy of explanations about tenurial “competition” and the dynamics of tenurial change using a cross disciplinary perspective.Design/methodology/approachThe paper critiques key explanations on the nature and type of competition between housing tenures, notably dual and unitary models, and the role of private renting in explanations of tenure dynamics. The paper also explores some of these ideas empirically by examining the changing role of the private renting relative to other tenures in a number of European countries and in Australia.FindingsThe paper expresses doubts about the potential for unitary markets to develop/continue as integrated markets because of the fundamental problems about ensuring continuing investment in the private rented sector and constraints on the maturation process, particularly where ownership of rental housing is diverse and small‐scale. The analysis suggests that housing tenures are quite fluid and with a general trend towards deregulation of private rents there is a blurring of the distinction between different types of rental systems.Practical implicationsThe analysis suggests that it is critical to understand changes in private renting taking into account broader economic conditions, trade‐offs about housing consumption and investment, and public policy settings.Originality/valueThe analysis draws out theoretically, and explores empirically, the process of change in tenure relations by for the first time focusing on the role of private renting in these dynamics.

Intra-Family and Socio-Political Dimensions of Land Markets and Land Conflicts: The Case of the Abure, Côte d'Ivoire

This article is a contribution to reflection on the question of land markets in Africa. Based on a case study of Abure society (Côte d'Ivoire), the article emphasizes, first, the relation between the intra-family dimension of land rights and the functioning of the land lease market. Particular attention is paid to intra-family land tensions induced by the land lease market, and their repercussions in the form of inter-community conflict reflecting the ethnic-national basis of the land lease market (with autochthonous Abure lessors and Burkinabe tenants). Second, emphasis is placed on the socio-political dimension of land tenancy relationships. The article is based on a deciphering of the land rights and land tenure practices within Abure family groups, and of a 2001 conflict which set Abure young men against Burkinabe pineapple growers. Beyond the inter-community conflict surrounding land, the article reveals an intergenerational conflict within Abure society itself between social juniors and the elders who manage family land, regarding the delegation of rights to lease out family land and the distribution of land lease (rental) income.