Socioeconomic Change and Land Use in Africa: The Transformation of Property Rights in Maasailand

Product Description
This study investigates how and why a group ranch members in Kajiado District, Kenya, supported the subdivision of their collective landholdings into individual, titled units, and what outcomes resulted in this transition to individual rights. Viewed over a longer time scale, the author finds that politics is at the core of institutional change.
Review
"This is a highly esteemed piece of academic work on a complicated African policy question by an African scholar with a rare combination of intimate knowledge of the ecology, culture and politics of the area."
- Audun Sandberg, Associate Professor of Social Sciences, Bodø University College, Norway"This study is informed by cutting-edge theoretical insights and fresh in-depth materials and ethnographies of institutional change, offering a definitive statement on the social transformations taking place in contemporary Maasailand."
- Mohamed Salih, Professor of Politics and Development, Institute of Social Sciences"This book addresses the puzzle of why otherwise rational Maasai seek to sub-divide group ranches, consequently losing the environmental and economic advantages of retaining collective holdings. Drawing from expertise in ecology and public policy, Mwangi shows the perverse effects that political factors can have on economic decision-making, with individualization of land - "rationally" driven by fear and defensiveness - achieving decreasing ecological viability. This volume will be interest to those in the social sciences dealing with property law, agricultural economics, and political theory."
- John Galaty, Professor of Anthropology, McGill University
"In this carefully presented analysis of property relations among the pastoral Maasai of Kenya, Esther Mwangi has added intellectual value to the growing body of literature which demonstrates that privatization of land through titling or other forms of documentation, per se, is not a sufficient condition for transformation in agrarian systems in Africa - or indeed elsewhere. A combination of internal and external economic, social, cultural, and political parameters must work in tandem to create the environment necessary for desirable change. Ultimately, Mwangi affirms that it is those parameters, rather than the conversion of systems of property in land by fiat, which will determine the direction of change in society."
- H.W.O. Okoth-Ogendo, Professor of Public Law, University of Nairobi
About the Author
Esther Mwangi is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C.