Legal Strategies for the Development and Protection of Communal Property

Whilst historically communal property has had very different meanings and functions in the UK, China, and other regions of the world, parallel developments are emerging, and modern perceptions are converging even as each region faces its own unique challenges in the management of land and natural resources. These developments have raised an important question: What legal strategies are most likely to promote the development and protection of communal property? Answers to this question will not only guide domestic debates on resource governance and community development, but also provoke global discussions and help to formulate global guidelines to address pressing challenges.

Contributions to Legal Strategies for the Development and Protection of Communal Property focus on legal strategies for the development and protection of communal property as it relates to land and other natural resources, considering how these strategies 'map' over different jurisdictions (England and Wales, Scotland, South Africa, Cameroon, Italy, Israel, and China) and through different jurisprudential approaches. Legal Strategies for the Development and Protection of Communal Property looks at property beyond the traditional, individualist, and exclusive ownership model, placing the focus on communal property from different standpoints and linking the empirical perspective with the theoretical perspective. In doing so, it challenges the theory of communal property through empirical case studies, not only linking theory with practice but also linking the local with the global.

Ting Xu, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, University of Sheffield,Alison Clarke, University of Surrey, Emeritus Professor of the School of Law

Dr. Ting Xu is a senior lecturer in law at the School of Law, Sheffield University. She is a graduate of Sun Yat-sen University (LLB) and the London School of Economics (LLM & PhD). She is the author of The Revival of Private Property and Its Limits in Post-Mao China (2014), lead-editor (with Jean Allain) of Property and Human Rights in a Global Context (2015), and the author of a number of articles in leading journals, mainly on aspects of the comparative law of property. She is the founder of the 'communal property research network'.


Professor Alison Clarke is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Law at the University of Surrey. She is a property lawyer with a particular interest in the social, political and economic effects of different kinds of property rights regimes as they apply to land and other natural resources, and in comparative analysis of property principles. She has written on a variety of property related topics, including the relationship between communal and private property, indigenous land rights, diversification of property forms, custom and long use, and property rights in water.

Introduction, Dr Ting Xu & Professor Alison Clarke
1. Commons Governance, Normative Pluralism and the Enduring Role of Custom, Professor Christopher Rodgers
2. Taking Stock of Italian Commons: Un-common Grounds?, Dr Margherita Pieraccini
3. Property in the Kibbutz: Old and New, Professor Abraham Bell, Professor Gideon Parchomovsky, & Mr Benjamin Weitz
4. Community Rights in Scots Property Law, Dr Malcolm Combe
5. The Legal Status of Customary Land Tenure Systems and the Protection of Communal Property in Cameroon, Dr Walters Nsoh
6. Customary Law and Communal Property in South Africa: Challenges and Opportunities, Professor Juanita Pienaar
7. Understanding Collective Property in the Chinese Context through the Lens of Community, Dr Ting Xu & Dr Wei Gong
8. Ownership and Belonging in Urban Green Space, Dr Simone Abram & Professor Sarah Blandy
9. Water: A Common Treasury, Professor Rosalind Malcolm & Professor Alison Clarke