Transformations on the Ground

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Transformations on the Ground considers the ways in which power in all its forms—local, international, legal, familial—affects the collision of global with local concerns over access to land and control over its use. In Botswana's struggle to access international economies, few resources are as fundamental and fraught as control over land. On a local level, land and control over its use provides homes, livelihoods, and the economic security to help lift populations out of impoverishment. Yet on the international level, global capital concerns compete with strategies for sustainable development and economic empowerment. Drawing on extensive archival research, legal records, fieldwork, and interviews with five generations of family members in the village of Molepolole, Anne M. O. Griffiths provides a sweeping consideration of the scale of power from global economy to household experience in Botswana. In doing so, Griffiths provides a frame through which the connections between legal power and local engagement can provide fresh insight into our understanding of the global.

Preface

Introduction

Section I: Historical Dimensions of Land in Botswana: Contemporary Entanglements

1. The International Landscape and its Influence on Land in Botswana

2. Reframing the Governance of Land

3. Institutional Frameworks and Governance

Section II: The Bottom Up Impact of Land on Diverging Family Lifeworlds and Gender Relations

4. Families, Networks and Status

5. Transformations on the Ground

Section III: Law and Space: Negotiating Legal Plurality in Botswana

6. Negotiating Conflict: The Handling of Disputes in the Land Tribunal

7. Constructing Legality in the High Court and Court of Appeal

Final Reflections

Appendix

Bibliography

Index