scholarly journals Protectors Or Enablers? Untangling The Roles Of Traditional Authorities And Local Elites In Foreign Land Grabs In Cameroon

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frankline Anum Ndi ◽  
James Emmanuel Wanki ◽  
Joost Dessein
Keyword(s):  
Local Elites ◽  
Land Grabs ◽  
Foreign Land ◽  
Traditional Authorities

The State of Land Grabs

2021 ◽  
pp. 243-256
Author(s):  
Heidi Hausermann ◽  
David Ferring
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Regulation ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Gold Mining ◽  
The State ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Public Servant ◽  
Land Grabs ◽  
Traditional Authorities ◽  
Directing Attention ◽  
Big Men

This chapter investigates the regulatory fictions underpinning foreign investment in “small-scale” gold mining in Ghana. It explores the shifting practices and subjectivities of big men, frontmen, and secretaries who, in relation with others, mediate foreign mining. In Ghana, big men, frontmen, and secretaries are key agents who help Chinese miners procure official paperwork and concession. The chapter contributes to understandings of the state vis-à-vis land grabs by directing attention to the actual conditions under which foreigners control concessions. Detailing the shifting performances and practices facilitating foreign gold mining, the chapter reveals how unremediated mining landscapes and associated environmental impacts are enabled by fictions of mining's developmental benefits and of rational environmental regulation. It also shows how key state and nonstate intermediaries maintain both the appearance of legality as well as the fictional neutrality of the state as public servant, reproducing the historic and problematic narrative that farmers and traditional authorities “giving away land” are ignorant of existing laws.

scholarly journals Energy and Food Demands, Drivers of Land Grab; A Case of Rufiji River Basin In Tanzania

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Godfrey Eliseus Massay
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Land Grab ◽  
Land Grabs ◽  
Foreign Land ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Rufiji River

Land grabs has been a tendy phenomena in the last decade across the grobe with Africa and Asia being the hard hit regions.  There has been many drivers that fueled land grabs including the crisses in the food, fuel and finance sector. Attempts has been made by scholars, activists and international communities to define what consitute “land grab” in the contenporay period. Informed by the framework definition of land grabs provided by International Land Coalition’s Tirana Declaration of 2012, this paper uses two cases of foreign land-based agricutural investments to prove the existence of land grabs in Tanzania. Broadly, the two cases are evidence of the global energy and food crises shaping the national and local politics of land governance. These national and local politics are manifested into land grabs dispossesing communities of their land. The paper urgues that there is direct link between the global and the national politics of land grabs. If further shows the role played and approaches used by social movements to resist land grabs.  

Immortals in a foreign land: the Kargaly diadem

Antiquity ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (339) ◽  
pp. 160-172
Author(s):  
Katheryn M. Linduff
Keyword(s):  
Tianshan Mountains ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
Foreign Land ◽  
Precious Stones

Spectacular objects may carry powerful messages about cultural affinities and legitimation. Such is the case set out here for the Kargaly diadem, supposedly a headpiece, of gold and semi-precious stones buried in a pit on the southern edge of the steppe in the northern foothills of the Tianshan mountains some 2000 years ago. This was a period when the Han Empire of China was seeking to increase its hold over the western borderlands and it is in that context, and the fluctuating rivalries of local polities, that the Kargaly diadem is to be understood. Chinese iconography figures prominently on the diadem which may have been a diplomatic gift from the Han imperial court, but technological details suggest that it was produced within the western borderlands beyond China itself. The combination of Chinese and other elements testify to the fluidity of cultural interaction around the borders of the expanding Han Empire and the imitation and incorporation of symbols of power by contending local elites.

Coming Home to a Foreign Land

2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 20-26
Author(s):  
Michael Daxner
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Foreign Land ◽  
Final Curtain ◽  
Holding Back ◽  
Lack Of Knowledge

These days, the old Europe is moving towards its final curtain call. The war in the Balkans is a spectre which repeats and concludes all that happened in the last century; and a ghostly farce unrolls before us. Concepts like war and peace, the rights of nations, humanity and human rights are the conceptual covers of a happening now ripening into fateful maturity. Its primary causes were a tactical holding back, a lack of knowledge of the real circumstances, secret and openly expressed prejudices, and a shabby mentality of 'not getting involved'. As a result of this, all structures are being destroyed.

Сирия (аш-Шам) в системе османских владений (XVI – начало XX в.)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.R. Zhantiev
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Face ◽  
High Level ◽  
The 19Th Century

Аннотация В статье рассматривается роль и место Сирии (включая Ливан и Палестину) в системе османских владений на протяжении нескольких веков от османского завоевания до периода правления султана Абдул-Хамида II. В течение четырех столетий османского владычества территория исторической Сирии (Билад аш-Шам) была одним из важнейших компонентов османской системы и играла роль связующего звена между Анатолией, Египтом, Ираком и Хиджазом. Необходимость ежегодной организации хаджа с символами султанской власти и покровительства над святынями Мекки и Медины определяла особую стратегическую важность сирийских провинций Османской империи. Несмотря на ряд серьезных угроз во время общего кризиса османской государственности (конец XVI начало XIX вв.), имперскому центру удалось сохранить контроль над Сирией путем создания сдержек и противовесов между местными элитами. В XIX в. и особенно в период правления Абдул- Хамида II (18761909 гг.), сохранение Сирии под османским контролем стало вопросом существования Османской империи, которая перед лицом растущего европейского давления и интервенции потеряла большую часть своих владений на Балканах и в Северной Африке. Задача укрепления связей между имперским центром и периферией в сирийских вилайетах в последней четверти XIX в. была в целом успешно решена. К началу XX в. Сирия была одним из наиболее политически спокойных и прочно связанных со Стамбулом регионов Османской империи. Этому в значительной степени способствовали довольно высокий уровень общественной безопасности, развитие внешней торговли, рост образования и постепенная интеграция местных элит (как мусульман, так и христиан) в османские государственные и социальные механизмы. Положение Сирии в системе османских владений показало, что процесс ослабления и территориальной дезинтеграции Османской империи в эпоху реформ не был линейным и наряду с потерей владений и влияния на Балканах, в азиатской части империи в течение XIX и начала XX вв. происходил параллельный процесс имперской консолидации.Abstract The article examines the role and place of Greater Syria (including Lebanon and Palestine) in the system of Ottoman possessions over several centuries from the Ottoman conquest to the period of the reign of Abdul Hamid II. For four centuries of Ottoman domination, the territory of historical Syria (Bilad al-Sham) was one of the most important components in the Ottoman system and played the role of a link between Anatolia, Egypt, Iraq and Hijaz. The need to ensure the Hajj with symbols of Sultan power and patronage over the shrines of Mecca and Medina each year determined the special strategic importance of the Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Despite a number of serious threats during the general crisis of the Ottoman state system (late 16th early 19th centuries), the imperial center managed to maintain control over Syria by creating checks and balances between local elites. In the 19th century. And especially during the reign of Abdul Hamid II (18761909), keeping Syria under Ottoman control became a matter of existence for the Ottoman Empire, which, in the face of increasing European pressure and intervention, lost most of its possessions in the Balkans and North Africa. The task of strengthening ties between the imperial center and the periphery in Syrian vilayets in the last quarter of the 19th century was generally successfully resolved. By the beginning of the 20th century, Syria was one of the most politically calm and firmly connected with Istanbul regions of the Ottoman Empire. This was greatly facilitated by a fairly high level of public safety, the development of foreign trade, the growth of education and the gradual integration of local elites (both Muslims and Christians) into Ottoman state and social mechanisms. Syrias position in the system of Ottoman possessions clearly showed that the process of weakening and territorial disintegration of the Ottoman Empire during the era of reform was not linear, and along with the loss of possessions and influence in the Balkans, in the Asian part of the empire during the 19th and early 20th centuries there was a parallel process of imperial consolidation.

The Concept of “Self-Government” across Cultures: From the Western World to Japan and China

Cultura ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-72
Author(s):  
Donglan HUANG
Keyword(s):  
English Word ◽  
Western World ◽  
Meiji Japan ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Qing Government ◽  
Provincial Autonomy ◽  
Traditional Counterpart ◽  
Japan And China

Abstract This paper focuses on the change of the meaning of “self-government” after it was introduced from Western world into East Asia in late 19th and early 20th century. By surveying the process of translation and dissemination of the concept “self-government” as well as the institutionalization of local self-government in Japan and China, the author points out that in Meiji Japan, the meaning of the word “selfgovernment” underwent significant changes from “freedom” which means antiauthoritarianism that was transmitted in the English word “local-government” to sharing the responsibility of national administration as embodied in the German word “Selbstverwaltung” along with the establishment of Prussian modeled local selfgovernment system. In late-Qing China, on the other hand, the term “localgovernment” was accepted as “self-reliance” as a way to achieve national prosperity and independence by enhancing individuals’ capacity, or “provincial autonomy” as a step to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. Qing government enacted a set of “selfgovernment” laws with reference to Japan’s system, but it turned out to be the same as its traditional counterpart enforced by local elites to offer public services under the profound influence of the Confucian tradition of xiangguan(local heads) in ancient China instead of incorporating the local elites into the state administrative system.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Levien
Keyword(s):  
Social Relation ◽  
Comparative Sociology ◽  
Land Grabs ◽  
Book Studies ◽  
The Relationship

This introductory chapter provides the context of India’s “land wars” and growing global interest in “land grabs.” It then details and critiques the three main theories of the relationship between dispossession and capitalism, which it calls the modernization, proletarian redemption, and predatory theories of dispossession. After documenting the shortcoming of each, it argues that dispossession is a social relation of coercive redistribution that it is organized into socially and historically specific regimes. The key to a comparative sociology of dispossession is to examine how distinct regimes of dispossession interact with diverse agrarian milieux. The book studies the interaction between India’s neoliberal regime of dispossession and the agrarian milieu of “Rajpura,” and argues that the result is dispossession without development. After explaining the book’s methodology and fieldsite, the chapter concludes with an overview of the book.

The World Underfoot

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hallie M. Franks
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Physiological Reaction ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Foreign Land ◽  
Social Gathering ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Ideal

In the Greek Classical period, the symposium—the social gathering at which male citizens gathered to drink wine and engage in conversation—was held in a room called the andron. From couches set up around the perimeter of the andron, symposiasts looked inward to the room’s center, which often was decorated with a pebble mosaic floor. These mosaics provided visual treats for the guests, presenting them with images of mythological scenes, exotic flora, dangerous beasts, hunting parties, or the specter of Dionysos, the god of wine, riding in his chariot or on the back of a panther. This book takes as its subject these mosaics and the context of their viewing. Relying on discourses in the sociology and anthropology of space, it argues that the andron’s mosaic imagery actively contributed to a complex, metaphorical experience of the symposium. In combination with the ritualized circling of the wine cup from couch to couch around the room and the physiological reaction to wine, the images of mosaic floors called to mind other images, spaces, or experiences, and, in doing so, prompted drinkers to reimagine the symposium as another kind of event—a nautical voyage, a journey to a foreign land, the circling heavens or a choral dance, or the luxury of an abundant past. Such spatial metaphors helped to forge the intimate bonds of friendship that are the ideal result of the symposium and that make up the political and social fabric of the Greek polis.

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