Land tenure, land law and development: some thoughts on recent debates

This paper offers a discussion of some of the features of recent land tenure debates and policies. It argues that two different orientations can be discerned: one that tends to regard land primarily as an economic asset and another that rather takes a (human) rights orientation and emphasises food and shelter security. These different orientations can be seen to be related to contrasting conceptualisations of extra-legality and different ranges of policy options when it comes to the legalisation or formalisation of land tenure and the acknowledgement of arrangements alternative to Western style individual ownership.