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Call for Papers

Call for Papers 
Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 
Volume 5, Number 3 (Spring 2012) 
“Land Ownership and Tenure” 

Papers must be received by November 1, 2011 to be considered for publication in this issue.

Please send manuscript publications to the managing editor: Leslie Shortlidge shortlidge.2@osu.edu. See Style Guidelines at www.raceethnicity.org

Submission of artwork for the cover that relates to the theme of the issue is welcome. See website for submission guidelines.

Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts encourages and welcomes contributions by scholars, researchers, grassroots activists, policy advocates, and organizations 

UN-Habitat,  The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, concluded that more than one billion people live without any security of tenure in informal settlements in “developing” countries. The historic basis for this insecure land tenure system is varied. In Africa south of the Sahara, for instance, approximately 70 percent of the population resides on traditional lands designated as state lands due to the colonial legacy and post-independence land redistribution policies. State governments are often in a position of control over these vast tracts of traditional land which can lead to situations in which states grant concession to land without consultation to current residents and without mechanisms to legal redress. This discrepancy underscores the unjust politics of land ownership and land distribution that contribute to an inequitable world politics of social progress and human development.

If “land is not just a resource to be exploited, but a crucial vehicle for the achievement of improved socioeconomic, biological, and physical environments” (FAO), then access to land ensures the security and health of the poor. The current practice of large-scale of land acquisitions, or land grabbing, as experienced by many communities in the Global South is a cruel, unethical, and legal violation of the fundamental human rights of communities to live a dignified life.

The politics of access to and exploitation of land and natural resources assume fundamental relations of power control and the policy of social inclusion; however, both notions imply and consolidate that access to land and land ownership, particularly in the Global South, reflect broader patterns of intra-institutional dynamics that explain how marginality and socio-political exclusion take place within countries and on the global stage. Understanding these dynamics, in the context of land ownership, enable us to recognize who benefits from a global politics of unequal development that often requires access to, and ownership of, public land including national forests, communal lands, traditional lands, etc.

One might ask where we can draw the line between legal access and normative rights to land, and the epistemological narrative (such as truth, belief, and justification) that legitimize the grabbing of land which include national forests, communal lands, traditional lands, etc. in the name of social and economic progress. In other words, how could the logic of land ownership be defined in an increasingly diverse world that governs by a single economic ideology of market liberalization?

Topics of inquiry can include but are not limited to:

• How race relations impact the accessibility to land and land distribution in marginalized communities. 
  

• How ethnic minorities define their rights and access to land in the age of economic neoliberalism and market fundamentalism. 
  

• Have land deals, as experienced in many African countries, for example, undermined or increased social stratification in terms of class, gender, and ethnicity? 
  

• How is the current trajectory of land grabs changing the nature of land use and land rights and the structural balance of production, social norms, and gender roles? 
  

• Have the large-scale land acquisitions by foreign investors in many countries of the Global South assembled racialized processes of foreign direct investments? 
  

• How we can assess the concept of collective landownership and access to land that reside within indigenous people’s cosmovision vs. individualized notion of ownership that increasingly informs the scrambling attitude of corporations to acquire land in the Global South?

• In which ways has the role and concept of citizenship been affected by access to land and land rights in countries across the Global South. 
  

• How we can envision alternative and practical aspect of a democratic and collective community-based ownership and access to land, and what that conceptualization would looks like in the age of economic globalization?
  

• What is the impact for rural women, small holder farmers, indigenous peoples and peasants of the loss of arable land put under land grab contracts in recent years? 
  

• What are the mechanisms, including legal mechanisms, can displaced communities utilize to prevent further displacement and marginality?
  

• How does increasing biofuel demand and the REDD (or REDD plus) or other posed policies and posited rural livelihood strategies that are proposed as environmental initiatives that simultaneously advance ecologically sound principles intersect with land tenure issues and environmental concerns faced by marginalized groups in Global South countries?

• The effectiveness of land-certification projects and other pro-poor legislation for racial and ethnic minorities.
  

• How do these issues continue to play out in the United States in particular and North America in general? In Europe?