Selected papers from a conference held in September 2003 at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Communal tenure from above and from below. Land rights, authority and livelihoods in rural South Africa / Ben Cousins, Aninka Claassens -- Land tenure reform in South Africa : a focus on the Moravian Church land in the Western Cape / Lungisile Ntsebeza -- Contestation, confusion and corruption : market-based land reform in Zambia / Taylor Brown -- We fought the war to return to the old ways. Conflicts about land reforms in Dande, Northern Zimbabwe / Marja Spierenburg -- Fractionating local leadership : created authority and management of state land in Zimbabwe / Bill Kinsey -- First-comers and late-comers : the role of narratives in land claims / Carola Lentz -- State formation, access to the commons and autochthony among the Berbers of the Middle Atlas, Morocco / Bernhard Venema -- Land and the politics of identity. The case of Anywaa-Nuer relations in the Gambella region / Dereje Feyissa -- Trumping the ancestors : the challenges of implementing a land registration system in Madagascar / Sandra Evers -- The struggle for land rights in the context of multiple normative orders in Tanzania / Rie Odgaard -- Traditional additional authorities in Uganda and the management of legislatively decentralised forest resources / Frank Muhereza -- Participative approaches and decentralized management of the Samori forest in the Baye municipality, Mopti region (Mali) / Bréhima Kassibo -- Insiders out : forest access through village chiefs in Senegal / Sagana Thiaw, Jesse Ribot -- Fighting over crumbs? Small valleys in West Africa as a new locus of land / Mayke Kaag.