Food, Justice, and Land - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 257

social classes linked to each other by their varying relationships to land (Herring 2003).
Second, a land policy does not emerge from or is not carried out in a vacuum. When
carried out in the real world, a land policy causes a change in the actually existing
land-based social relations. Some changes favor the landed classes, other elites, or the
state, whereas others may favor the poor. Third, land laws and land policies are not
self-interpreting and not self-implementing. It is during the interaction between vari-
ous, often conflicting, actors within the state and in society that land policies are actually
interpreted, activated, and implemented (or not) in a variety of ways from one place
to another over time (Franco 2008). Fourth, land-based social relations are varied and
diverse from one setting to the next shaped by socio-economic, political, cultural, and
historical factors. Fifth, land-based social relations are dynamic and not static. These
are not like development projects that can be contained within a timeline. Land-based
social relations remain in a continuum and are ever-changing long after a land-titling
project or a land-reform program has officially ended, for example. Land-based social
relations are not automatically changed when official documents are changed, as. for
example, granting formal titles without instigating reforms on actually existing ten-
ure. Conversely, actually existing land-based social relations may dynamically change,
whereas official documents remain unchanged (Herring 1983). Finally, property rights
and land policies are often the focus of contestation and struggle between different
social actors and interest groups.
Therefore, multiple land policies have become necessary, even in one national set-
ting, in order to address the varying land-based social relations existing in society. These
policies can be in the form of land reform, land restitution, land-tenure reform, land
stewardship, and so on. The critical consideration is reforming land-based social rela-
tions, meaning reform of the terms under which land-based wealth is created, appro-
priated, disposed, and consumed. Inevitably implicated in this process will be the ways
and means by which such processes are effectively controlled by different groups, which
entails political power relations—or governance. Hence, the meaning of land reform
should not be restricted to its conventional narrow definition of redistributing large
private estates to landless and near-landless rural poor, but should envision a political
process that recasts land-based social relations by redistributing land-based wealth and
power from propertied classes and the state to various classes of labor, such as peasants,
landless laborers, pastoralists, forest product gatherers, small-scale fisher folks. This way
of looking at land reform requires some clarification of basic normative features. We
now turn to this discussion.
Key Themes in Pro-Poor Land Policy
Land policies are not technical-neutral devices. When implemented, land policies
impact different social classes and groups of people differently, favorably or otherwise.
Not all nominally pro-poor land policies are meant to favor the poor. Not all pro-poor