[3rd Meeting of Culture and Society Research Unit / 3rd Public Workshop] (October 21, 2011)

Date:21 Oct, 2011 15:00-18:00
Venue: Small Seminar Room, 3F Inamori Bldg.,
Kawabata Campus http://www.asafas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/about/access.html

Program

15:00-15:10 Introduction
15:10-16:30 John Galaty (McGill University)
“Maasai Land Conflicts and Civil Society: Local Struggles and a Global Audience”
16:30-16:40 Coffee break
16:40-18:00 Junko Maruyama (Tsuda College)
“Resettlement, Development and Indigenous Peoples’ Movement: Two Cases from San Communities in Southern Africa”

Abstract

John Galaty (McGill University)
“Maasai Land Conflicts and Civil Society: Local Struggles and a Global Audience”

The ascendency of the state in Africa and the process of privatizing agrarian land has made many rangeland communities vulnerable to having their mobility drastically curtailed and even to losing their land. This paper will examine the opportunistic seizure of pastoral lands by a variety of actors, including smallholder farmers, political class, entrepreneurs, commercial farmers, speculators, conservationists, tour operators, miners, and foreign states, from the colonial period to the present. From small- to large-scale, valuable pastoral lands have been or are being acquired through local incursions, state allocation or purchase, promising to use it for highly efficient commercial agriculture, or by conservation groups and entrepreneurs who vow to protect wildlife and at the same time propagate high-end lucrative tourist ventures. Land displacements have come to represent a major cause of violent conflicts and legal disputes in pastoral regions. In recent decades, organizations of civil society have increasingly sprung up to defend pastoral land rights, often linking their causes to claims of indigeneity anchored in the creation of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The global audience for indigenous land loss and the advocacy of national and international civil society has both mitigated and stimulated local conflicts. Paradoxically, as indigenous land rights have been recognized, actual land loss has accelerated due to the increasingly aggressive role of the state in large-scale land acquisitions by outside parties. This paper will examine the interaction between land grabbing, land losses, and land conflicts, and role played by civil society and assertions of indigenous rights in Eastern and Southern Africa, with special focus on the experience of the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania.

Junko Maruyama (Tsuda College)
“Resettlement, Development and Indigenous Peoples’ Movement: Two Cases from San Communities in Southern Africa”

The notion that indigenous peoples should have the right to maintain their distinct cultures, lifestyles, and territories has become widely accepted within the international community during the last two decades. While the concept “indigenous peoples” is highly controversial in African context compared with the more consensual situation in nations with white settlers, the San hunter gatherers of Southern Africa also have been involved in global indigenous peoples’ movement, and become one of the best-known “indigenous peoples” in Africa. Indeed, recently some groups of the San have successfully acquired land rights, with the support of the global movement. Of these, two cases from Botswana and South Africa will be highlighted in this presentation; Botswana San won in court the right to return to their land in nature conservation area, and the San in South Africa were handed over land title deeds from President Mandela. Both cases were hailed by NGOs, activists, and the mass media as a landmark for the rights of indigenous peoples in Africa. This presentation will analyze the historical backgrounds and the negotiation process of these two cases, and then elucidate the San’s livelihood and social relationships after they gained land-use rights. Finally, by comparing both cases, dynamics underlying relationships between the San and national and international communities, and positive and negative impacts of the global indigenous peoples’ movement on the San will be discussed.