Land, Mobility, and Belonging in West Africa Natives and Strangers [Paperback]

Focusing on an area of the savannah in northern Ghana and southwestern Burkina Faso, Land, Mobility, and Belonging in West Africa explores how rural populations have secured, contested, and negotiated access to land and how they have organized their communities despite being constantly on the move as farmers or migrant laborers. Carola Lentz seeks to understand how those who claim native status hold sway over others who are perceived to have come later. As conflicts over land, agriculture, and labor have multiplied in Africa, Lentz shows how politics and power play decisive roles in determining access to scarce resources and in changing notions of who belongs and who is a stranger.

Important in the sense that it constitutes a detailed historical study of how complex narratives of belonging and notions of property interlock. . . . It is academic work of the first order.

Carola Lentz is Professor of Social Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University.

Winner, 2014 Herskovits AwardCareful research design and case justification, and probing of arguments with detailed empirical material, make Lentzs arguments compelling for political scientists as well as the social and economic anthropologists and historians who make up much of the natural constituency for this impressive study.Lentzs work is distinguished by the intensity of its focus. Not soon is anyone likely to cover her chosen topic and place more thoroughly.This book makes an important contribution to the scholarship on the transformation of African concepts of land tenure. It shows that history and memory are important resources in conflicts over property and belonging. . . . The book adds to the recent debates on customary tenure by exploring the precolonial history of property claims.[This] book makes a remarkable contribution to the growing literature on mobility in Africa. Its emphasis on both the social and spatial strategies of West AfriclSø