| Abstract: | Disputes over land tenure can be understood only if the wider sociopolitical context is considered and if several different levels of confrontation are included in the analysis. This is especially true when normative structures are plural and institutional structures ambiguous. Moreover, when sociopolitical negotiability is a central feature of land tenure conflicts, analysis should focus on 'open moments' as particularly intense periods of rearrangement of the social order, when legal rules, social norms and tradition are questioned, and authority and legitimacy challenged. Applying these arguments to Niger, the author first outlines the plural norms and the overlapping institutions operative in the field of land tenure. He notes that the history of State attempts to regulate, reform and change these norms and institutions with the aim of rationalizing and simplifying the system mostly had the effect of increasing uncertainty. Uncertainty existed already in the late 1980s when a land tenure reform, the Rural Code, was announced, and it was increased by the development of political pluralism around 1990. Two cases of land tenure conflicts from Zinder Department in eastern Niger reveal the multidimensional character of tenure disputes and the importance of 'open moments' in the changing structure of land tenure arrangements. Bibliogr., notes. |
AfricaBib 
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