The Politics of Possession Property, Authority, and Access to Natural Resources

The Politics of Possession investigates how struggles over access to resources and political power constitute property and authority recursively. Such dynamics are integral to state formation in societies characterized by normative and legal pluralism. Includes some of the latest theoretical work on the dynamics of access and property and how they are joined to questions of power and authority Explores how access to resources is often contested and rife with conflict, particularly in post-colonial and post-socialist countries Offers a thought-provoking approach to the study of everyday processes of state formation Shows how the process of seeking authorization for property claims works to legitimize the authorizers, and the efforts undertaken by politico-legal institutions to gain legitimacy underpin and undermine various claims of access and property Contributors explore from a wide empirical compass of original research spanning Latin America, Africa, South-East Asia and Eastern Europe

Thomas Sikor is Senior Lecturer in the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. His research focuses on rural property and resource governance, with a geographical emphasis on post-socialist countries. Sikor has authored more than 30 journal articles, is the editor of Public and Private in Natural Resource Governance (2008) and has guest-edited special issues in World Development (2009), Development and Change (2009), Forest Policy and Economics (2006) and Conservation and Society (2004).

Christian Lund is Professor in International Development Studies at Roskilde University, Denmark. He is the author of Local Politics and the Dynamics of Property in Africa (2008) and Law, Power, and Politics in Niger - Land Struggles and the Rural Code (1998). He is the editor and co-editor of Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa (2007), and Negotiating Property in Africa (2002).