Governance of land rights
One of the modern state's key functions involves recognising property rights, providing property categories and framing entitlements, and protecting access and use (Bruce 2012; Lund 2011).
These processes involve adjudicating, registering, and enforcing rights (Meinzen-Dick 2009), and sanctioning particular rights and claims through licensing and permits. Formalisation of rights almost inevitably involves contestation: simplifying tenurial relations and allocating rights to an ‘owner' entails sanctioning particular rights and claims rather than merely putting a stamp on rights that unambiguously existed before the process (Dwyer 2015). Land rights systems can be located on a scale stretching from ‘informal' customary, socially embedded, or vernacular property systems, to ‘formal' state regulated rights. However, the concept of formality can be misleading. Customary or vernacular systems can be formal in that they derive decisions from general rules and norms (Bruce 2012). In this article, we consider formalisation as both a solution to contestations and ambiguities and a source of problems. Formalisation can work as the first line of defence against land grabbing, but also facilitate expropriation and dispossession. We begin by identifying three ‘ideal-typical' formalisation projects—all of which occur in Indonesia—with distinctive objectives and effects. Each project involves particular constellations of power and interests that support or resist them.
More legal literature on Laws.Studio
More on the topic Governance of land rights:
-
Agricultural law -
Constitutional law -
Fundamentals of Advocacy -
History of state and law -
Muslim (Islamic) law -
Professional ethics of a lawyer -
Roman law -
Theory of state and law -
UK Bar -
US Bar -
-
Conflictology -
Ecology -
Economy -
Finance -
History -
Law -
Medicine -
Philosophy -
Religious studies -