**1. Introduction**

This paper tries to reach a conclusion about issues that theoretically seem to relate only in a very loose way: Resilience is, on the one hand, defined as the capacity to absorb shocks and perturbations

of social-ecological systems and show their adaptability and transformation capacity often related to a natural hazard and climate change (see Folke et al., 2010) [1]. On the other hand, new debates in the social sciences and humanities on land, ecosystems and natural resource managements argue that it is political constellations that undermine the resilience of local actors [2,3]. The latter is related to critical perspectives in political ecology and ecological anthropology that have triggered new meanings about land and land use generally and, in particular, in Sub-Saharan Africa. This region is the geographical and empirical focus of this paper, which makes the following basic argument: Institutional change from resource-interrelated common property institutions to fragmented state and then private property and open access developments leads to commons grabbing for local people. It furthermore creates an institutional pluralism from which local elites formed during colonial times can profit because they can select the private property options after the undermining of state property during the implementation of neoliberal privatization policies driven by donor agencies [2,3]. These processes do not just lead to commons grabbing; they also undermine the adaptive capacity of local people to enhance their resilience, and this is the connection, which has not been made in the literature up to now and that combines the two strands. I thus argue as a theoretical part of this special issue that commons grabbing will also reduce the adaptive capacity of people in social-ecological systems and are thus to be seen as resilience grabbing processes.

These processes have often not been recognised in LSLA settings in Africa, because companies collaborate with local elites and with the state.

My interest in land issues grew from a political ecology perspective in the context of African crises that were prevalent in the 1970s, and which were repeated in hunger crises in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s up and continue to the present time. Many of the issues labelled as hunger and underdevelopment, with the added complication of climate change, have been presented as 'home made' African issues in development studies. These have repeatedly focused on neo-Malthusian, technology-based views and on narrowly conceptualized neoclassical ideas (see Timberlake's 1985 *Africa in Crisis* as one of the most cited examples). Counter-arguments have been manifold. Perhaps the most important theoretical strands were neo-Marxist, and local and global political ecology (Robbins 2005 [2], Peet, Robbins, Watts 2011 [3]) lines of argumentation that advocated colonial and market-specific legacies as reasons for the ongoing crises.

Another strand dealt with the way Africa and African development is perceived from the development perspective of the Global North. James Ferguson's image of the Anti-Politics Machine focused on Lesotho's development problems, which were labelled as problems of an independent state during the Apartheid era. It became evident, however, that Lesotho experienced almost the same level of dependence as the Bantustans, which were under South African control during the time of Apartheid. Thus, the Anti-Politics Machine was hiding the asymmetric power relation behind the notion of development (Ferguson 1994) [4]. This finding led to a political economy lens being used to look at development issues in Africa in general. On the one hand it might be polemic to view all African nations as being like the Bantustans, but on the other, there is some basic truth in the concept of the anti-politics machine: Discourses on development in Africa hide underlying political and economic interests (or disinterests). But what are these economic interests? Who pushes them? And what is at stake? Is it just globalized neoliberalism that sets the stage by labelling Africa in a specific way (see also Ferguson's 1999 Global Shadows) [5] or are additional issues involved?

It is interesting to see what labels are being used at the present time in this regarding Africa. While daily political media are full of new versions of the doomed continent, with a recent shift in focus from ethnic wars, under-development and environmental degradation to issues regarding climate change and terrorism (and lately the Ebola virus); economic journals, reports and analyses are enthusing over the new boom in African economies. The latter focus on high GDP growth rates, marvellous investment opportunities in mining, oil and land as well as, increasingly, in IT and other industries. In addition, it is said that education is improving, poverty is being reduced and demography—now

suddenly a good thing—is rising: Africa enables the Fastest Billion "(as Charles Roberson's 2012 book title promises) [6] through foreign investment, if "*done in the right way*".

One area where Africa has seen much investment is in land. The literature on Large Scale Land Acquisitions (LSLA) and investments or land grabbing is growing, especially in the resurrected *Journal of Peasant Studies*. Several authors with at least three major theoretical orientations have been setting the scene, (a) outlining opportunities and documenting collateral damage caused by investments (Deininger 2011) [7]; (b) by adopting a critical political economy position, arguing that there will be more losers than winners (de Schutter 2011 [8], Hall 2011 [9], Cotula 2013 [10]); and (c) a (rather marginal) Neo-Marxist position. The latter seems to follow Harvey's *A Brief History of Neoliberalism* (2007) [11], seeing large-scale agricultural investments or land grabbing as part of "primitive accumulation" processes by which the agricultural producers will form an agrarian proletariat (see Basu 2007) [12]. There is a significant body of newer literature (see the *Journal of Peasant Studies* since 2011), which unfortunately rarely includes in-depth field studies or emic views of actors in this field (see critiques by Oya 2013, and Lanz, Gerber and Haller 2018) [13,14].

However, organizations such as ILC, IIED Oxfam and Justica Ambiental provide more in-depth case studies, and there are some rare overviews such as the one by German, Schoneveld and Pacheco (2011) [15]. These do not, however, provide much data from the emic perspectives based on the longer periods of fieldwork that characterize social anthropological research. Unfortunately, social anthropology has been rather silent on these issues apart from some overviews (see Li 2011 [16] on labor issues, and Fairhead, Leach and Scoones 2012 [17] on green grabbing). However, these papers do not often provide concrete insights into LSLAs or land grabbing processes over a longer period of time, which could indicate changing constellations of actors, how their decision making unfolds and what strategic actions they are taking. Human geographers Locher and Sulle, writing about a Tanzanian case study, are a noteworthy exception [18]. Therefore, a combined institutionalist and political ecology view on this topic might be helpful, particularly regarding new institutionalist approaches that discuss land issues in the context of changing rights and obligations. Of course, the actual actors' perceptions cannot be neglected. The main question is how deals covering land and related resource rights are perceived by local actors as these have been changing since precolonial times. This requires an approach that focusses on how land and land-related common-pool resources are perceived in a changing world in relation to the bargaining power of involved actors and discourses they use to legitimate their actions: New institutionalism in social anthropology provides an analytical tool for these issues and links them to external historical change.

#### **2. Land and New Institutionalism in Social Anthropology**

Land has been a research preoccupation of social anthropologists since the colonial era, and has intensified with more recent land grabbing debates not only in African contexts, in which the land grabbing debate is most prominent, but as well in Asia and Latin America. What was perceived as land from a colonial perspective differed much from local views on what land meant. The colonial gaze made landscapes a wild, uncivilized and at best underused resource, which did not correspond with the local views on what land meant. However, many social anthropologists were caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, differences in perception between the local and the colonial actors became evident and asked for cultural translations while on the other hand, the colonial contexts, in which anthropologists were working in the Colonial era put them in a position of being collaborators or at best informants [5,19]. In Latin America, these issues were linked to the eviction of local groups and their marginalization as these views where not perceived by the colonial powers as being relevant land claims (see Wolf 1983 [19] for a general overview, Stocks 2005 [20]). In Africa, as well in parts of Asia, local people partially remained on their territory, but also faced evictions. Still, large portions of areas in Africa were labelled customary land (see Chanock 1991 [21], Peters 2013 [22] for Africa, Li 2011 [16] for Asia).

Colonial developments in Latin America started much earlier and led to debates over frontier zones. On the colonized side of the frontier, large parts of land were allocated to private land-owners through the Spanish or Portuguese crown, which were later claimed by the elites of the emerging states. Behind the frontier, often in rainforest areas, a constant colonialism process occurred that is still going on today Millington (2018) [23] for Bolivia. The original inhabitants were given reserves and gained some rights as indigenous peoples after an extremely harsh process of expulsion and physical partial elimination (see Bodley 1985) [24]. And despite political recognition of indigenous peoples, the debate that these small groups have rights to too much land is ongoing (see Stocks 2005) [20]. In Asia, similar processes unfold with the exception of India and China (see Geiger ed. 2008) [25], Li 2014 [26]). Nevertheless, indigeneity is a political tool these groups can use to defend their land (see also Galvin and Haller eds. 2008) [27]. In contrast, I will now focus on African contexts for the rest of this paper as most large-scale land acquisitions take place there and because the issues on the African continent differ significantly from Latin America and Asia as the political notion of indigeneity is difficult to be applied in Africa.

While colonialization processes in the African context were also not uniform, there are some similarities between the British and the French control as well as the Lusophone colonial and the pre-WWI German contexts (see Mamdani 1996: 80ff.) [28]. A globalized view of European expansion indicates that colonizing Africa in order to use both the land and the work force made much more sense than colonizing the land without the people. Land is only valuable when made valuable by external view. This was the case at the beginning of colonial times in Africa in the context of low mechanization. The fact that the colonial process was one not so much of economic profit but of high costs did not really matter in the beginning. What mattered was the initial idea of getting minerals and putting virgin land to use—and this view held sway in the minds of administrators despite the fact that people were living on the *virgin* land. The label of customary land was created in colonial times, based on evolutionist views of land institutions (from free to commons to private property) developed in this initial phase of colonisation. British colonial indirect rule became the blueprint, and outsourcing the management and control over land and people to select local authorities called chiefs was part of this model (Mamdani 1996 [28]., see also Haller ed. 2010 [29], Haller 2013 [30]). In many areas studied and compared, precolonial power structures included politically egalitarian, segmentary lineage groups, big-men structures (leading rivalling men) or more hierarchical groups. The institution of chief was often a colonial creation installed by the European authorities and especially undermined the egalitarian and big-men power structures [29]. These chiefs then commanded a specific territory of a so-called tribe. In this naturalization process of African land governance systems, it was emphasized that resources were communal. Therefore, there was no notion of real property. Peters outlines this by referring to Iliffe as follows:

*The imposition of customary tenure with its denial of full ownership rights to land-holders had several key e*ff*ects. One was to halt development of a land market by ignoring or denying evidence of past transfers, and by declaring that land was inalienable "according to tradition". Another, by placing land management under the institution of chieftaincy (though ultimately under the colonial state), intensified competition among the various incumbents of traditional leadership roles and centred that competition on land. The fixing of territorial boundaries over which the traditional authorities were made trustees greatly reinforced the link between political authority and authority over land*. (Peters 2013, pp. 3–4) [22]

Many examples from African colonies provide evidence that the British tried to implement indirect rule, as did the French in practice—in contradiction to their direct rule policy (see Mamdani 1996) [28]. Despite the many differences over the continent, this led to the functioning of a cheaper management structure, never allowing full ownership at the local level (by chiefs) but which kept ultimate control over ultimate land ownership. As a consequence, this transformation fuelled local conflicts by inciting competition between installed chiefs and other elites. This is illustrated by Firmin-Sellers [31] and case studies from Mali, Cameroon, Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana where there is a common shift in chiefly

authority over land [29]. Therefore, customary property was a camouflage of a wrong labelling of traditional property systems in which land was said to be (a) not for sale; (b) not related to individual views of belonging; and (c) commonly owned and therefore not property as such. This colonial narrative was upheld and supported a discourse on modernization processes in agricultural development: Common property tenure is perceived as a hindrance to development, despite the fact that during and after colonial times—with and without force—local peasant smallholders were producing cash crops for the market (see Netting 1993 [32], Peters 2013 [22]). Nevertheless, it was not just an increasing population that gave rise to competition over land since the 1970s but also increasing pressure on reduced land due to growing, multiple interests by the introduction of new agricultural production methods, mining and through the institutionalization of protected areas (game and forest reserves, see Neumann 1998 [33], Haller 2013 [30]).

The intensification of land use and land-related resources worldwide, highlighted by repeated hunger crises in the Sahel zone, created the image of land being degraded due to the overuse of natural resources held in common. This triggered a debate on the relationships between land and property not just from an economic angle but from an ecological point of view as well. Reference was made to Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons (1968) [34]. In this essay, which had no empirical evidence but was a Neo-Malthusian polemic against the freedom of human population growth, Hardin did not want to deal with land issues per se. He painted a picture of pastoralism in which actors are only interested in increasing their herd size illustrating the process of freedom in reproduction (here of cattle and then more generally of people) as degrading the pasture because it is governed as common, not private, property (see Acheson 1989 [35], Ostrom 1990 [36], Haller 2007a [37]). This had a strong effect on state policies, especially in supporting justifications of states to control natural resources within their boundaries and it was a welcome ideological legitimacy for stricter state governance and later for neoliberal privatization policies (see Feeney et al., 1990 [38], Fairhead and Leach 1996 [39]).

The arguments picked up by mainstream science and by governments regarding the economic and ecological flaws of traditional land tenure triggered a process of revision and rethinking. This was led by Elinor Ostrom, who devoted her Nobel Prize winning work to craft a new picture of common-pool resource management in common property regimes [36]. The main argument was that renewable common-pool resources, which are subtractable (what is taken away cannot be used by others for the moment) and difficult to defend (but possible by a group that can organize collectively), could be managed in a sustainable way by so-called robust common property institutions. Foremost, she and other scholars highlighted that Hardin erred in his view on the commons as open access but that resources held in common property regimes are the property of a group and not no one's property. Eight design principles for well-working institutions in her book *Governing the Commons* (1990) [36] were deducted from (mostly) social anthropological case studies. They indicated that institutions address the problem of freedom and free riding by reducing transaction costs (information, monitoring and sanctioning). Ostrom's work related to environmental issues, and it followed the line of argument of new institutionalism on property rights proposed by Douglass North (1990) [40], who in fact had followed Roland Coase's theory on the firm and labour contracts to illustrate that institutions do reduce transaction costs. The amount of work emanating from Ostrom's approach to new institutionalism as related to the commons is immense. There is now a digital library of the commons as well as journals linked directly to the issue. This is proof of the broad scholarly interest and is also manifest in growing participation in the *International Association for the Study of the Commons* (IASC), previously named the *International Association for the Study of Common Property*.

However, some variables that the economic historian Douglass North had integrated in his model such as power relations, were missing in Ostrom's work. She was more concerned with the possibility of self-organization and sustainable use of common-pool resources and neglected historical embedment or issues of politics and of power. Despite the recognition that institutions are also embedded in larger systems, her primary focus was thus not multilayered in the sense that, viewed from a political economic and ecological stance, local systems are often not articulated but still power-related parts

of state constitutions, legal systems and state elites as well as of international global governance regimes and global markets (see Haller 2007a [37], 2007b [41]. While studies focusing on the way self-organization is made possible as a puzzle stemming from game theory, a new approach from social anthropology emerged [42]. Starting from models in economic anthropology, Jean Ensminger (1992) [43], a US social anthropologist, proposed an interrelated model in which external factors (environment, population and technology) lead to changes in relative prices of goods and services and had a local impact (Figure 1).

**Figure 1.** Modelling institutional change. Source: Jean Ensminger (Ensminger 192, p. 10) [43].

Local contexts (in the model bargaining power, institutions, ideology and organisation) are influenced by the changing relative prices and relative value that a specific resource or a region is gaining. In line with the work of North [40], Ensminger argues that the bargaining power of actors, the way they organize and the way they select and craft institutions and legitimate this by ideologies impacts the distribution, use and finally reproduction of resources in the environment, population and technology, i.e., the feedback loops in Figure 1. Therefore, in line with North she does not follow other New Institutionalism economists who predict that the market will choose the optimal institutions (see Williamson 1987 [44]). Rather, institutional settings and, later, distribution are shaped by bargaining power and ideology as a resource of legitimacy. This means that, for example, a rise in the relative price of land will not automatically trigger immediate privatization but can have different outcomes depending on the bargaining power of actors and the way they are able to produce legitimacy (ideology) for their choice of a certain institutional option. This model has been enlarged, looking closely at issues of bargaining power and ideology (including constructivist approaches regarding discourse and narrative to produce legitimacy, often in either so called traditional or modernization ideologies [29,30]).

This point will be taken up later in this article as I return to the issue of land and the colonial and postcolonial discontinuity. But how are these issues related to land, to LSLAs or land grabbing? The theoretical focus on common-pool resources could direct the view that land is a general category, linked to the territory of a group of users including multiple resources without specifying the way the land and its resources are used. This is often ignored, and the focus is on how property rights on land alone are defined from an outside point of view of the state and its actors. Hence, there is a paradox: On the one hand, land as agricultural land or soil is often separated from resources other than soil, while on the other hand land-related common-pool resources are ignored as if these would not matter for local people and their livelihoods and is only perceived as pure nature [29,30,33,39]. In legal terms, land becomes a category of its own, separated from all interrelated resources. While water continues to be seen as an additional and necessary resource for commercial agricultural production, all other resources and the way they are interconnected are no longer of interest, be they pasture, fisheries, wildlife, veldt productions, etc. However, from an emic view (local socio-cultural perspective), land might mean something very different as I will try to show based on the research conducted

by a team involving three MA and three doctoral students and a postdoctoral researcher in areas of six African floodplains in Mali, Cameroon, Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana between 2002 and 2008 funded by the Swiss National Science foundation ([29,30,45]).
