**3. Elements of Emic Perceptions of Land: Insights from Research in African Floodplains**

Several authors emphasize that the precolonial notion of land in Africa was shaped by numerous factors, which involve tenure systems, type of land use and what identities land generates. They argue that from a local (emic) perspective land was not based on the notion of state and market-related private property. Instead, it was always considered as a mixture of private and communal property under the governance of leading offices (e.g., elders, specialists) in more politically symmetrical situations or through leaders from more asymmetrically powerful groups. And it was related to so-called first settlement of such groups or as a consequence of the conquest of feudal or more powerful systems (see Benjaminsen and Lund 2003 [46], Toulmin 2008 [47], Peters 2013 [22]). These authors then argue that the "traditional tenure systems" we see today do no longer represent precolonial tenure but are mostly the result of imposed colonial transformations of property rights labelled "customary law" (see Chanock 2005).

The aim of this paper is not to provide a literature review on this issue as this has been done elsewhere ([28–31]) but to show insights from a research project called *The African Floodplain Wetlands Project* (AFWeP) conducted by our team that introduces some interesting elements of emic views on land in six floodplain regions in Africa (see Haller ed. 2010) [29]. These cases are of interest in the context of this paper as comparative research was based on long-term anthropological fieldwork, including participant observation, oral histories and biographies in order to understand the emic view. The team combined literature and archival research with oral history on precolonial institutions for the management of common-pool resources and produced results for the:


Regarding the emic perception of land in precolonial times, this research revealed that the category *land* is embedded in views of territory and landscape with all its resources, which are perceived as being interconnected and used for securing economic and political existence. People were concerned with a secure livelihood, as well as the political security that an area with all its resources provided. Four issues are of importance to understand what land means through this lens: (1) first-comer—late-comer relations; (2) coordinated and reciprocal use of common-pool resources and related to this; (3) spiritual landscape relations; and 4) emerging institutions for common-pool resource management (see also Haller 2019 [48]):

1. As in the cases referred to by Lenz (2006) [49] and Toulmin (2008) [47], political differentiation regarding resources and territories was based on the distinction between so-called first-comers, mainly but not always hunter-gatherer or fishing communities, and late-comers, such as agricultural and pastoral groups. Land in the narrow sense was just one aspect of something emically called an area (or a territory) with many resources. First-comers did not use all the resources, while late-comers often used other niches, leading to increased ethnic specialization in some cases (case studies 1–4) or by using the whole set of resources (case studies 5 and 6 which is a process that developed later on also in the other cases.


The case studies also show that there is a peculiar mixture of economic rationale and power specific justification to institutional arrangements. In addition, they are combined with ecological adaptive features, fitting into the seasonal flood water advance and retreat. First-comers and more powerful late-comers tried to legitimize their presence via symbolic interaction with the supernatural beings living in the landscape as a whole or in important parts of the landscape, (e.g., on land or in water), but these spirits have further implications if not heeded. Interestingly, more powerful groups that arrived later in an area tried to marry into first-comer families or to link up with the spiritual world of the latter. Therefore, land is just one part of a belief system. In this system, people see their economic and political well-being as a central focal point which is linked to the spiritual world in relation to the environment. Regardless of differences in political systems (whether segmentary, constructed around 'big men' or hierarchical), the locally-developed models show similar forms.

It is also evident that these first-comers and late-comers were trying to find arrangements with the aim of achieving economic security and political gains for the leaders themselves. This aspect can be illustrated in the case of the Kafue Flats fisheries (case study 5). There, the Ila late-comers married into the Batwa first-comer fishing communities and established a notion of spiritual ownership over ponds via ancestral links. These ponds are filled with water and fish during the rainy and flooding seasons. To coordinate the use of fish and to prevent free-riding, collective fishing days are agreed upon by leaders and their spiritual masters, allowing all members of the community access to fish since it is a communal resource. Fishing activities are allowed only after rituals for ancestral sprits are completed. Before the rituals and after the fishing days, fishing is not allowed in the ponds anymore. This rule is monitored and sanctioned twofold: There are patrols, and there are fines for those disregarding the dates set by community leaders. In addition, there is a monitoring institution embedded in the belief system itself. People link ancestral spirits to crocodiles that are found in the ponds after having left the main river after floods. Not to submit oneself to the rule of coordinated use after a ritual has been carried out will lead to attacks by ancestral spirits via crocodiles. This functions as a kind of supernatural sanction. There are also clear rules concerning fishing techniques based on gender differences (spears for men, baskets for women). Reciprocity in the use of the ponds is furthered by issuing invitations to members of other communities [30,50,51].

This last point is central to the study. We discovered that local groups have a clear notion of boundaries and territories, but these notions include an idea of permeability and flexibility of boundaries. This can be seen as a way to reduce risks resulting from variability in flooding patterns and consequent availability of resources. Therefore, institutions, which include notions of flexibility of use, reduce risks and fulfil an important economic aspect inherent in the general principle of minimax-strategies. However, such a way of coordinating resource governance also make sense politically as alliances are possible, theft is reduced and, most importantly, the prestige of local administrators as distributers of resources is enhanced. This is clearly the case with the Kafue Flats fisheries example but also in other instances (see cases in Cameroon (Fokou 2010 [52]), and Tanzania (Meroka 2010 [53])).

This leads us to encourage further studies in this direction. At the same time, a preliminary conclusion can be proposed. From an emic ontology and epistemology, land is part of a larger, symbolically viewed complex of cultural landscapes inhabited by spiritual beings that influence production and consumption for people, arriving at various stages in time and therefore occupying different (hierarchical) identities in this interaction. Moreover, the different resources that we view separately as outsiders are closely interconnected. This is also reflected in the institutions that often play the role of a coordinating body between the different, interconnected uses. For example, in the Waza Logone floodplain (case study 2) fisheries, agricultural practices and pastoralism have to be coordinated so as not to conflict with one another. Conflicts cannot be ruled out completely, but institutions often emerge out of conflicts as a result of conflict-resolution mechanisms. Institutions are also flexible and can be renegotiated if they do not fit a specific problem or are questioned by more powerful groups: This is a highly interesting aspect. Institutions are often the result of different bargaining power constellations. The most powerful does not simply win but has to engage in a compromise with the less powerful in order to reduce resistance that is economically not viable. More powerful people can of course devise rules that are in their interest alone but will face resistance at high costs from other users as common-pool resources are not easily defended. Therefore, it is better to share and to establish a legitimized distribution. For example, hunting institutions in the Kafue Flats illustrate this point [30,50,51].

This shows that if we focus only on land we miss all the other resource contexts and regulations in which the land question is embedded. Specifically, poorer resource users (but not just poorer resource users alone) do not only use the land. They also use the related common-pool resources and institutions that are organized around this multiple use and depend on these more than the richer resources users in order to make a living.

What does this mean, especially in the context of recent literature on land and identities by Benjaminsen and Lund eds. (2003) [46], Kuba and Lenz eds. (2006) [54], Derman et al. (2007) [55]? We see this literature not as a contradiction, but as a contribution to a better understanding of hitherto

misread customary "systems in Africa". We strongly claim that land is a political issue in Africa, but we also argue that we need a more complex perception of landscape areas with multiple uses and users. The hegemonic misreading of land in Africa (see also Fairhead and Leach 1996) [39] has huge resource management and political implications—as we will see later on—that go beyond issues of land per se but include notions of identity and politics of belonging (see Kuba and Lenz eds. 2006) [54]. We will argue that specific issues of belonging are triggered also by external influences on ideologies as outlined in the model of new institutionalism. These have become ways to legitimise inclusion and exclusion in times of externally induced scarcity (Derman et al., 2007) [55] and contestations due to processes of open access and privatization (see for example Chaveau 2006) [56]. This does not contradict the view that during precolonial times access to common-pool resources was negotiated and sometimes unequally distributed (see Derman et al., 2007) [55]. Our studies still show, however, that in this system people with less power were able to get access as well. In addition, and mainly relevant to the discourse on nature conservation, the literature shows that we are not dealing with pure nature but with cultural landscape ecosystems that were created and maintained by the described common property institutions.

Concrete analysis of fisheries, hunting, pasture and rules related to agricultural production in the six case studies reveals that marginal groups also profited from these regulations (e.g., special fishing rights and techniques for women, access to wildlife for the less wealthy, access to pasture on a relatively equal basis, the right to cultivate land in a specific territory). The right to cultivate can also take on the form of more exclusive rights that come close to what could be termed private property. However, these rights did not translate into the right to dispose of the land privately as such decisions about land and land related common-pool resources are vested in larger groups. This means that giving away land was not in the hands of these individuals but was a decision taken by the larger groups and their leaders (e.g., in Kafue Flats although land for cultivation is inherited on the basis of use rights of fathers, leaders still have the possibility to give the land to someone else if needed [30,51].

This refers to the question of formalization of land rights, and in this regard, the dichotomy between formal and informal institutions is rightly criticized in this context (see Cleaver 2007) [57]. On the other hand, local institutions do display certain formalizations. While it is made clear to everyone what basic rules are binding in a specific context, everyday practice might indicate a more flexible way of handling issues; Douglass North would call this informal. I would also argue that institutional bricolage (Cleaver 2002) [57] often happens at the informal level, while bargaining and fixing specific bricolage happens in a more formal arena when rules are revised. Actually, bricolage might not be the right term as it obscures the contested power-specific and strategic notions that are inherent in such processes.

The final issue is the one of legal pluralism that is often cited in the literature (e.g., Benjaminsen and Lund 2003) [46]. Again, based on the six comparative case studies, legal pluralism happens in a precolonial setting. This pluralism is related to the flexibility of local, seasonally-changing resource use requirements and is therefore of a different order than the legal pluralism that we see during colonial and postcolonial times

#### **4. The Colonial and Postcolonial Disconnect**

In the previous section, I outlined the different views on land from an emic perspective and their implications regarding tenure. This analysis is important in order to understand the impact of colonization on the way land and land related issues are perceived until today. The change brought by colonial administration cannot be underestimated because it was—despite all the differences in national colonial policies and formal procedures—a blueprint leading to legal pluralism and disconnections of another order.

Looking at Scott's 1998 work on the way that states see resources [58] reveals the basic perspective adopted by the colonial administrations. Paradoxically the state simplifies—as it wants to know what is at stake in order to control it—but at the same time complicates management by separating entities of natural and social order which were originally intertwined. And according to Li (2014) [26] in a critique of Scott's views, it creates messiness. Benjaminsen and Lund are right to argue that this did not just happen with European colonial powers. They cite the example of the Dina -Code in Mali which was introduced by the Fulbe Caliphates in the 19th century. The code regulated and formalized the transhumant use of pasture in the inner Niger delta. Benjaminsen and Lund (2003) [46] do not recognize, however, that this formalization was based on pre-existing institutions regulating and mitigating access not just to pastures but also fisheries and agricultural activities (see Moorehead 1985 [59], Beeler and Frei 2010 [60]). The basic idea was thus different from what the European powers did later. While formalizing some parts of existing regulations and also dealing with them in Islamic courts in the Dina-System, the European Roman, state-related legal system divided resource use and management regulations by treating the interlinked resources under separate and different legal domains. This process was revealed in all the case studies in the AFWeP project (Haller ed. 2010) [29]. It is true that missionaries, trading companies, and later on state administrators and social anthropologists tried to understand precolonial institutions and fit them into a legal system colonial in order to capture and use them. But during the process by which traditional institutions were transformed into so-called customary rights shaped to fit the rights systems of the colonial powers, many issues were misread (see also Benjaminsen and Lund eds. 2003 [46], Berry 1993 [61], Chanock 1985 [62], Moore 1986 [63], Peters 2013 [22]). This process created three levels of pluralism and disconnections.

One is that based on a strategic and single resource-oriented focus during colonial times. Modern Roman law was introduced in areas of central importance for mining and European settler plantation agriculture, while the indirect rule (or direct rule that turned into indirect rule in the French system) was introduced in areas that were less interesting for the state. There, administration was delegated to lower levels of the so-called customary law. Neo-Marxists in social anthropology such as Claude Meillassoux and others argued that these areas were just of interest as a reservoir and recreation territories for cheap labour, to be used elsewhere and then sent back, in order to increase capital accumulation (Meillassoux 1981) [64]. Therefore, even these areas were only of interest as to set up a system that faked local but cheap governance for colonial powers. Thus, a three-layered system was created: written, "traditional" and unwritten. There was the dualism between "modern" European Roman law for land used by the state and by white private owners linked to the colonial and postcolonial state and the "traditional" but state controlled and formalized "customary" laws. The third level was made up of the unwritten rules and norms at the local level, the informal customary rules and regulations, linked to membership of a community or ethnic group [22,46,65] that partially prevailed but, for the most part, was undermined [29].

The second source of pluralism and disconnections refers to the way the state looked at resources in a fragmented way, which then later fitted market, global and neoliberal orders. Colonial and postcolonial states are not different in this regard. While precolonial systems were mostly about a specific territory as a whole landscape, including the living and the dead and mystical powers influencing all elements in a kind of local ecosystem view, the colonial and postcolonial state's view was selectively materially oriented in order to profit from or gain prestige from specific resources. An illustrative case is Tanzania—first a German and then a British colony. Both powers disconnected the landscape from its resources in order to formally use them for different purposes. One division was between white farming and protected areas, with the latter being further divided into forest reserves and game reserves. The forest reserves functioned as areas of timber extraction for the railways; while the game reserves were privileged spots for "sportsman-like hunting", reserved for British nobles and colonial administrators for prestigious habitus-like activities. Protection of such disconnected areas with the focus on just one resource, led to eviction of people and massive transformations of these former cultural landscapes. As they turned into bush and became invaded by tsetse flies, the "wild" animals moved out of the reserves and into the fields of the evicted people (see Neumann 1998 [33], Brockington 2003 [66], Meroka and Haller 2008 [67]). Therefore, the legal disconnect during

colonial times—the disconnect between land and common-pool resources—became a physical resource disconnect in these former cultural landscapes as water, fisheries, pasture, forestry were used and treated as separate units owned by the state and no longer by the local communities under common property institutions. This process manifests itself in all the case studies in the AFWeP and as well in research elsewhere in Africa (see for example Fairhead and Leach 1996 [38], Brockington 2003 [66]. The AFWeP also concluded that this disconnect was also manifest in the postcolonial administration of natural resources in the floodplains studied.

This leads to a third level of pluralism and disconnection. The states in which the floodplain studies were located (i.e., Mali, Cameroon, Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana) witnessed a massive institutional change during colonial times from common property including the governance of land and land-related common-pool resource to state property. Through this process, common-pool resources were separated legally from the cultural landscape ecosystems created by local people and put them under different departments such as agriculture, fisheries, wildlife, veterinary, water and energy, and tourism. All of these departments based, and still base, their actions on their own legislation and legal settings, leading to a disconnect in management. In Zambia for example, water rights do not consider problems related to fisheries and wildlife, but only look at energy production and irrigation for large-scale plantations (see Haller 2013) [25]. Examples such as this illustrate similar processes in all other countries and regions studied. Such disconnections also produce strife on different levels, not only creating conflicts between resource users, but also lead to different administrative units competing with each other. Again, the case of the Kafue Flats is illustrative. Here, wildlife and fishery departments are creating a conflicting plural setting for resource users as both departments claim authority over, for example, a protected area due to the presence of both fish and wildlife. As both these common-pool resources migrate due to flooding and floodwater retreat on the floodplain, management is complicated and neither local users nor state administrators really know who is in charge or which institutions to adhere too (see Haller 2013 [30]). This problem has also been studied in Southern Africa in the DARMA (*Defragmenting Resource Management*) Project led Mafaniso Hara and colleagues at the University of Western Cape (see Mlanga et al., 2014 [68]). All of these studies show the overlapping of legal norms of several distinct departments for just one resource such as fisheries. For example, in Zimbabwe, five departments have completely uncoordinated regulations on this resource [68]). Research from Zambia, Cameroon, Tanzania and Botswana shows similar findings [29].

Interestingly, these issues are not directly dealt with in the literature. Rather, the debate focuses on the "formal—informal" dichotomy or "bureaucratic and embedded" discussion, in which the argument is put forward that the distinction between formal institutions and informal norms cannot be the basis of an adequate analysis (see Cleaver 2003) [69]. However, I argue that this position misses the point because it does not reflect the relationship between historical change up to the present day, including the impact of the legal fragmentations as well as the ecological misreading of the landscape and the way social-ecological systems relate to each other (Berkes 1999 [70] makes a similar argument). Therefore, there is informality in so-called formal systems and formal processes in what are labelled informal and embedded customary systems. These contribute to institutional and legal pluralism from which actors can select based on the power constellations they find themselves in. One could, like Benjaminsen and Lund [46], critically argue that formal (and informal) colonial rule was not well enforced everywhere. That might be partially correct. Nevertheless, the new legal and formal administrative rules added up to the pluralism, even if it is not well enforced. They also provided ideological spheres of reference and can still now be strategically used by many actors.

#### **5. The Presence and Absence of the State**

The previous section illustrated how the precolonial emic view on land interlinked with common-pool resources in the AFWeP cases has been disconnected during colonial and postcolonial times and has led to new institutional pluralism. This section further tries to understand today's land issues by linking them to the states in crisis phenomenon as a further act in this drama. While being at the centre of resource management, the African states researched in the AFWeP case studies, are new forms of territorial, fiscal and resource management entities that are often still in close contact with and dependent on the former colonial powers. Increasingly, they are also subscribing to international and global economic trade networks, which further influence the management of natural resources since these relationships produce much-needed foreign exchange that is needed to meet state infrastructure and social expenditures. The new, post-independence African states examined in the comparative AFWeP project were trying to continue with the raw material export-oriented structures they inherited from the colonizers. In all of the cases studied, states depended on one or two basic resources for cash and foreign exchange revenues. In doing so, they were trying for finance what the elites in power saw as the economic basis for financing imports in order to modernize the countries. Large infrastructure buildings and services (e.g., road networks, dams, large plantations, green revolution and agrarian subsidies) were being set up and were often financed with overseas loans with the anticipation of high revenues in the future. Between 1975 and 2000 changes in relative prices, such as increases in oil prices (imports) and decreases in the prices of other raw materials (e.g., metals, food and fibre cash crops for export) led to financial crises and weak state structures as staff salaries and infrastructure could no longer be financed.

Governments were thus soon in the position where "making a state" became expensive, while at the same time, state activities could not contribute to the project of modernization (see also Ferguson's book *Expectations of Modernity* 1999) [5]. Four out of five country studies in the AFWeP show that between the 1970s and 1990s a dismantling of the state, which had formally taken over the management of all the natural resources in the name of state property, took place. Botswana was the exception as its gains from diamond mining could be widely distributed. However, in all five countries the state had crafted huge plural complex and disconnected management systems with laws and regulations. However, due to the lack of finance, governments were financially unable to "make state". State institutions responsible for the management of all the disconnected resources could not be enforced. In most of the AFWeP cases studied, this led to de facto open access to common-pool resources.

Once again, the Kafue Flats fisheries plainly illustrate this. As many people working in the mines and in mining towns lost their jobs due to the copper price crash of 1975, they turned to fisheries in the hinterlands, such as the Kafue Flats, because fish fetched high prices in the urban centres. As the Zambian fishery department was underfinanced, understaffed and underequipped it was unable to enforce basic issues such as mesh size and closing times in the Kafue Flats. Many seasonal fishermen and fish traders (men and women) moved—and still move—to the flats. There they fish as they please, for example using fine meshed draw nets. However, the state is not only absent; in certain discourses it appears that it is also very present. For example, when local people complain to the commercial fishermen that they are unable to enforce their fishery institutions due their lack of power, the commercial fishermen refer to the fisheries as a national resource and that they, as citizens of the state, are entitled to fish this state resource. The state is thus present and absent at the same time: Absent because the state regulations are not enforced and present through the ideology of citizenship which is used as a source of legitimacy to get free access to the common-pool resource. Actors from outside the area thus increase their bargaining power in order to select the institutional setting that suits them best—de facto open access—by legalizing this choice based on the discourse of citizenship [30,50].

Similarly, powerful actors from outside the communities studied in Mali (outside fishermen), Tanzania (in-migrating peasants) and Cameroon (pastoralists through paying state taxes and immigrated peasants) choose citizenship as a statement of legitimacy to increase their bargaining power and in order to be able to select the institution which suits their economic interests best from the institutional diversity that exists. The notion of citizenship in Botswana is less important and the pressure to use common-pool resources is not as strong as in the other cases studied. In the case of the panhandle and Okavango delta, however, local people struggle over the notion of autochthony regarding the possibility to draft management plans for Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) schemes (see Saum 2010) [71].

Thus, in these cases the competing forms of institutions are a central reality as also shown by research on the issue of how land and belonging are interlinked (see Benjaminsen and Lund eds. 2003 [39], Derman et al. eds. 2007 [48], Kuba and Lenz eds. 2006 [47]). These authors refer to the notion of how identity is built and constructed in relation to state institutions, scarcity issues and the relationship between first-comers "and late-comers". Nevertheless, it is important to see how, in the context of state failure and legal pluralism, bargaining power between actors is distributed and particular institutional choices are strategically made and legitimized in a concrete setting, based on economic and political options and preferences. These options and preferences are relational and also depend on fluctuations in prices. Therefore, the new institutionalism model of Ensminger (1992) [43] tries to analyse how the basis of actors' bargaining power is influenced by changes in relative prices and also how it is influenced by ideologies and discourses to legitimate the selection of institutions such as for example the preference of private property over common property. An often-used obvious ideological dichotomy is the one between "modernity" and "tradition" [29,30], which is similar to Ferguson's "cosmopolitan" and "local" (Ferguson 1999) [5]. The discourse of modern development often justifies state or private property while the discourse of traditional way of life legitimizes the claim on common property [29,30]. The Ensminger model of institutional change [43] and the check of chosen institutions on their robustness regarding resource use (Ostrom 1990) [36] give an indication on the ecological outcome of common-pool resources depending on distribution between and further behaviour of actors (see graph 1 from Ensminger [43]).

The model of Ensminger also hints at an important element of change, which triggers many local changes: External factors transform the relative prices for resources as commodities as well as for the value of an area compared to other commodities or areas (i.e., fish for trade shows a higher price increase as labour, an area close to a river under the context of increase of agrarian prices becomes more valuable for irrigation if infrastructure as a road is build). This change impacts the way that bargaining power of local actors as well as their options and selection of institution are shaped; at this stage there is a need to identify the triggering factors in this interactive process. I would argue that changes in relative prices are one of the strongest factors bringing about change. This is the case especially in the context of global neoliberal policies with which Africa is confronted.

#### **6. Paradoxes of Neoliberalism**

James Ferguson's work on neoliberalism in Africa outlined in the book *Global Shadows* (2006) [72] illustrates the issue of a policy that tries to cut state costs by delegating management of activities to the market and to lower levels of action arenas under the state and into the private sectors. This strategy seemed to be a central remedy to cope with state debts all over the continent as well as elsewhere, e.g., in Europe. And herein lies the paradox of neoliberalism: The idea of the state that ever since colonial times had been the vessel for protecting capitalism, now seems to be too expensive to maintain and needs a cure based on the medicine of dismantling the state. In relation to Africa, the discourse of efficiency (see Ferguson 2006) [72] also develops in the direction of restructuring the state and state services as these seem to be too costly. Internalized hegemonic discourses on the waste of financial resources, on corruption of elites, and on mismanagement and inefficiency in formal legal processes merge with the notion of the state, which is a naturalized colonial construct to be changed in neoliberal ways. However, as Harvey (2005) [11] points out from a Neo-Marxist perspective, neoliberalism can be seen as a political process of "accumulation by dispossession" by which the state reduces its legal capacities and controls, which then favours the economically and politically strong elites as it creates cheap spaces for their manoeuvrings. This process of neoliberalism is highly debated in historical social anthropology and critical geography, such as Wacquant (2009) [73] arguing that the neoliberal state is a political project which re-engineers the state and strengthens its penal element. This again has to be looked at from a theoretical (formal) and practical (informal) angle, as Hilgers (2012) [74] points out, and obtains its legitimacy from the discourse of globalization, which leads to localization practices (Swyngedouw, E. (2000) [75]). This process again hides the fact that the state still encompasses its

citizens but frees itself from its duties (Ferguson and Gupta 2002) [76] as it comes under economic pressure (see Lobao, L., Martin, R., & Rodríguez-Pose, A. (2009) [77]). But these powerful actors still need the state because the state is the body that restructures the legal order to create what I would call open opportunities. At the same time, the state provides a security-net for powerful market actors and provides legitimacy for their actions, arguing that all actions are made in the name of a democratic state. To marry Ferguson and Harvey on this point, the neoliberal order in Africa helped to distribute the scarce means into fewer hands by delegating more power to the local level on the front stage, while backstage, elites are profiting (see also Pootete and Ribot 2011 [78]). This is a new form of indirect rule by which the state remains the owner of the resources but does not bear transaction costs of their management, which are delegated to the local level. This is masked by the discourse of the incapacity of the government, in terms of state structures, to provide services and that the market will do this much better. Internationally, this discourse received high support, arguing it will give governance options to the lower level, itself an issue that many critical voices from development studies have been advocating for a long time. So, there is an ideological win-win situation—efficiency and the moral legitimacy of local participation, acting itself as an Anti-Politics Machine.

An example from the wildlife sector in Zambia is illustrative. While conservation and protection of wildlife had been a cornerstone of statehood, it became a major expenditure burden which could not be upheld after the neoliberal turn from the socialist system under Kenneth Kaunda to the market-oriented system of Fredrik Chiluba in the 1990s. The Wildlife Department, a military-like state organization, was then transferred into a so-called "Wildlife Authority", exposed to partial self-funding and asked to develop business models, in which tourism sites and lodges in the national parks had to be sold to foreign companies. This move was based on the obvious inefficiency of the Wildlife Department because of a lack of funds and increasing prices for wildlife products during the copper crisis when state income fell. As with the fisheries, the economic downturn led to de facto open access to state-managed common-pool resources. Due to high prices, pressure from local and outside communities on wildlife resources as well as from big business for trophy hunting increased [30,79]. Now that the Wildlife Authority has sold lodges to international operators, there are less revenues for the state as market forces are now responsible for the management of wildlife. In line with the efficiency and moral legitimacy discourse, protected areas have become an investment ground for conservation NGOs who, under the label of participatory approaches, have started the process of so-called "green grabbing" since profits from tourism and trophy hunting do not really trickle down to local or state levels but are in private hands (see also Fairhead, Leach and Scoones 2012 [17]). This is happening on territories that had already been grabbed from local people during colonial and again during postcolonial times that contain critical common-pool resources such as pasture, fisheries and wildlife as well as veld products (see Haller 2013 [30]). Chabwela and Haller 2010 [79]) provide a detailed analysis of institutional change from precolonial to postcolonial wildlife management illustrating this process.

The general argument here is not that the state did better but that by claiming to improve and decentralize resource governance, a small group of actors are now profiting by legitimizing this institutional choice through the discourse of efficiency and moral legitimacy. To increase moral legitimacy, participatory initiatives are linked to development issues. In reality, however, these initiatives and projects are more about elite control than local control and decentralization of power (see also Ribot et al., 2006 [80], Brockington, Igoe and Duffy 2008 [81], Galvin and Haller eds. 2008 [82]). While people will participate in monitoring and sanctioning devices in the wildlife sectors, there are no tangible benefits and no real ownership rights to resources that had been alienated by the state during colonial times and still, in the last instance, remain state property. Not just in Zambia but elsewhere in the AFWeP study as well as in the literature (see Haller and Galvin 2011 [82], Poteete and Ribot 2013 [78]), decentralization of wildlife and other common-pool resources such as timber for charcoal production is not about delegating power to the local level. On the contrary, it is about following the aims of—paradoxically—a cheaper way of recentralizing governance by externalizing

several transaction costs (e.g., in community monitoring projects) to the local level (ibid, see also Faye 2014) [83].

Returning to land tenure issues, the basic turn came with legal procedures that liberalized land laws in Africa. Based on the notion that land tenure is insecure and thus no asset for secure investments, the World Bank and other trade organizations pushed the revision of land tenure rights in many African countries. This happened *before* large scale land acquisitions or Land Grabbing became an issue around 2007–2008. However, the idea based on de Soto's notion that a cheap and smart legal system for land or leasehold titles would provide enough security needed for investment and development became the paradigm to follow. In this legal discourse, investors are said "to be attracted" and will provide jobs and related benefits, leading ultimately to "development". The outcome of such processes is mixed.

Overviews by Wily (2003) [84] and Toulmin (2008) [47] point out some of the problems and show two major tendencies. In some areas, village titles provide a large part of land to a collective and, although driven by elites, they offer much better options for local governance (see for Rufiji Floodplain Tanzania Haller et al., 2013 [45]), while the other form opens avenues for private titles, be these titles for sale or leasehold titles for 40 to 99 years (for example in Pangani Floodplain in Tanzania Mbeyale 2010 [85] and the Kafue Flats Haller 2013 [30]). In this context one could argue that neoliberalism provides at least some gains to local people as their land rights are registered and acknowledged. But the issue is actually more complicated and exposes one of the paradoxes of neoliberalism. This form of decentralized recognition does not address social structures and power asymmetries in social settings, and thus privatized land can be lost due to low power and low economic capacities whereby poor landowners sell land and, therefore, their resource base. In addition, village land can be grabbed from the state by formalisation processes, creating zones on which the state has access for conservation and investments (see Bluwstein et al., 2018 [86]).

A number of examples can be used to illustrate this. As Toulmin points out [47], one needs to determine who the local owners are, which is not an easy task. As shown above, there are complicated histories of settlement and of competing rights and institutions to regulate the access of different actors and actors' groups to several resources during different times of the year (i.e., seasonality). Toulmin labels this the problem of the so-called secondary users, who lose access to many resources [47]. I will illustrate the issue with examples from Sierra Leone and Zambia.

In Sierra Leone, a large Swiss Company called ADDAX plans to develop sugarcane plantations with the aim of producing bioethanol. One of the policies regarded as best practice is that local landowners are compensated. There are indeed first-comer families among the Temne ethnic group who argue they were the first people in the area, while the late-comers were given land to use. The first-comer families, therefore, regard themselves as managers of the complex resource systems of forests and palm trees to which others (late-comers) had access based on an allocation process and on institutional settings of resource use. This access is based on a rotation system and rules for gathering wild fruits from palm trees or access to water as a common-pool resource. In this case there were common property-like institutions that regulated the access for members of a village, specifically of first- and late-comers. The government and ADDAX now tried to find out who the "land owners" were and created compensation payments for the land they "lease" from the first-comer groups, who were then labelled exclusive land owners without sharing obligations. While there is still land available, the best land has already been taken by ADDAX based on these leases. In addition, there are fruit trees on the land that has been given away, to which access is no longer possible, with only the first-comers get cash compensation for these losses (see Marfurt et al., 2016) [87]. The second case again illustrates the situation in Kafue Flats, where—based on a new land act – the president and local chiefs can give out leasehold titles for 99 years within a chief's territory. When such lands were to be allocated in the best pastures in the Kafue Flats, opposition to the procedure surfaced and created great conflicts as the powerful rich cattle owners as well as the less powerful actors with smaller numbers of cattle both were about to lose access to pastoral areas (Haller 2013) [30].

The paradox of a neoliberal order is to reduce state power while at the same time increasing state power by providing tools on all levels for elites to appropriate resources. And as power structures at local levels have transformed much since colonial times, powerful actors use whatever institution and legitimacy is available to profit from this change. Land managers in Sierra Leone thus have no problem to be seen as "traditional land owners", while chiefs in Zambia label themselves as "traditional authority" and therefore become the main actors when it comes to decisions on leasehold titles. This is then often done over the head of the people (see the title of a paper by Cotula, Vermeulen, Mathieu and Toulmin 2011) [88]. However, what is not recognized is the fact that this is based on neoliberal processes that took place *before* external land investments began to surface. It is then that the impact of the neoliberal order unfolds on land as an isolated resource: When a rise in relative prices has been experienced, it attracts not only foreign but also local investment. I argue that these investments are undermining local livelihoods as access to land related common-pool resources is fragmented. At the same time the "expectations of modernity" do not come true as there are few jobs and less income, while subsistence crop production and access to the commons is restricted and becomes impossible.

#### **7. Commons Grabbing or What Is Wrong with Land Grabbing?**

As I have tried to show in this paper, the land grabbing issue falls on already previous alienations and transformations of African tenure systems in colonial and postcolonial times, leading to pluralism, disconnections and fragmentations, which already removes the commons from people. However, I would argue that the negative effects of these processes have worsened during times of land grabbing. This is because existing asymmetries are strengthened and new ones are created as many households lose access to common-pool resources as a buffer that is important during times of crisis, while having to take higher risks in normal times to be able to make a livelihood. It is also a process in which new information technologies and formal urban knowledge represents a cutting edge, while a rural orientation loses its value and power. My main point is that in this context the label land grabbing is misleading as are large-scale land acquisitions and investments. What takes place is a process of primitive accumulation, but in a much stronger sense than originally thought of by Marx and Harvey. Studies show that despite familiar arguments advocating that common-pool resources are not so central for local livelihoods, they are, on the contrary, especially so in times of stress and crisis: The crisis that many households in Africa currently experience is already strong even without the issue of land appropriation by outsiders. Removing access to common-pool resources by undermining common property institutions leads to what we call here resilience grabbing. People struggle with the extremely high volatility of market prices for natural resources and with the stress of having to feed a family and obtain enough money to meet basic needs such as housing, education, clothing, the subsistence economy of many households is already undermined (see Haller 2003) [30]. In these cases, people try to diversify, often travelling long distances to earn money. While they are away from their home areas, their cultural landscapes can be destroyed or grabbed and common as well as adpative and transformative capacity [1] is removed from local people. This renders them (smallholders, women and the elderly) extremely vulnerable to additional stresses such as sickness, climate variability or what is labelled "climate change". It leads to a young generation of people who have no future perspective as they have lost membership of the commons and access to common-pool resources, even if they are well educated, as they do not belong to the elite. If we speak of commons grabbing leading to resilience grabbing, and not just land grabbing, the issues become clearer as it adopts the local perspective as also illustrated by an Ila agropastoral farmer on the Kafue Flats in relation to fisheries:

"*If I have a problem (financial) or not enough food, I go to the flats and get some fish! But now I cannot get fish anymore, because it is all taken away. Or there is sugarcane, a land-owner or a land for wild animals (protected area). So, I just go hungry*!" (interview with author, December 2003, Mbeza, Kafue Flats, Zambia)

In the opinion of less powerful local people this process is undermining livelihood options as it restricts their access to a wide base of resources that are centrally important in times of need. Therefore, it is not just land that is taken away. Using the label of land grabbing or LSLA leads us into the trap of the anti-politics machine of development that does not match with local views.

#### **8. Where to Take It from Here**

The main argument in this article is, of course, at odds with the idea of a booming Africa with which I began this paper. It is instead the view of the doomed continent which is, of course, only one side of the story. The other side—and this is the answer to the question of where to take the debate—is to clearly analyse how local actors view this process, view the deals and conceptualize aspirations. It might well be that at the beginning of a land alienation or investment process, many local people hope for jobs and basic development facilities such as schools, health posts and secure water supplies and therefore might highly favour such an investment. But on the other hand, research shows that these promised developments do not come that easily and quickly, while access to vital resources is often lost immediately. It is interesting to see, then, what type of strategies and resistance local actors adopt in order to buffer the problem of the commons grabbing which in turn leads to resilience grabbing. This is then vested in strategies to change and devise their own institutions that might lead to a bricolage (Cleaver [57]) but also to a strategic selection of options based on bargaining power and possibilities within institutional pluralism through the strategy of institution shopping.

It will be important to study such processes and to discuss what the dominant strategies are to regain resilience via adaptation and transformability [1], using and maintaining cultural landscapes via common property institutions. Communal titles and mapping of resources, new discussions at the local level about institutions for the management of resources (e.g., by-laws, local conventions) might be an important way forward. I do not speak in favour of formalization but of true participation. Despite local political asymmetries, most actors would thus gain a sense of ownership of the institution-building process, a process which is called constitutionality. This term refers to processes of bottom-up institution building in which local actors, despite differences in power relations, find a way to get a sense of ownership in the crafting of institutions. Contrary to approaches such as environmentality (Agrawal 2005) [89], based on Foucault's governmentality transforming local actors into environmental subjects, a new approach called constitutionality is based on empirical studies of such processes and argues that real local participation anticipating power-asymmetries between actors and creativity for setting up rules addressing resource problems is the key to sustainability (see Haller et al., 2016 [90], 2018, [91]). Newer publications based on social anthropological research covering cases of impacts of European investments on land and related commons also show differentiated reactions to commons and resilience grabbing, reaching from small scale reactions ("weapons of the weak") to open resistance and bottom-up institution building (Haller, Breu, de Moor, Rohr and Znoj (eds.) 2019 [92], Haller et al 2019 [93].

Studying such processes can also lead to policy-driven ideas on how to support local resource users from commons grabbing and to strengthen resilience of their livelihoods and their cultural landscape ecosystems.

**Funding:** The AFWeP-Project was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Swiss Development Corporation via the National Competence Centre in Research (NCCR) North-South (2002–2010), literature research was part of the SNSF grant Nr. 10001A\_152773). The APC was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
