The Politics of Land: Dominant Regimes and Situated Practices
This special issue examines the politics of land focusing on the
intersections of dominant land and property regimes and situated land
practices that are not characterized by open conflict, but rather
mundane everyday negotiations. The selected papers show that the
interrelations between landed practices and regimes of land are
extremely variegated and complex, shaped by socio-economic factors as
well as by their own peculiar geographies and temporalities. Thus, they
can be examined most adequately in the specific geographic, socioeconomic
and historical context in which they materialize. Structural
factors matter, but they are (continuously) challenged by the agency
and everyday practices of many different actors, pursuing different and
mutable objectives and following varying trajectories, often far away
from the established rules. Viewed like this, dominant regimes of land
appear to be less overarching and monolithic than commonly understood.