Social research and development policy: two approaches to West African land-tenure problems

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Periodical article

Title:	Social research and development policy: two approaches to West African land-tenure problems
Author:	Stamm, Volker
Year:	2009
Periodical:	Africa Spectrum
Volume:	44
Issue:	2
Pages:	29-52
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	West Africa Benin
Subjects:	land tenure development projects evaluation
External link:	https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/afsp/article/view/123
Abstract:	This article analyses the extent to which the concepts underlying land policies in West Africa that prevail among the development organizations most active in this field correspond to the results of the theoretical debate on the same subject over the last three decades, which has involved almost all branches of the social sciences: ethnology, legal anthropology, sociology, history and rural economics. It shows that the outcomes of these academic analyses are in sharp contrast to the approaches propagated and translated into practice by development agencies, which often start from oversimplified and inadmissibly generalized assumptions. This leads to the question as to whether the diverging logics of the two disciplines may be responsible for this marked difference. The analysis is based mainly on the implementation of a land project in Benin by the American organization Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and German. [Journal abstract]