Emphasizing the emergence of new institutional realities from the encounter between colonizers and colonized people, this book highlights the capacity of indigenous communities, as well as settlers themselves, to shape and transform laws and legal figures originating in the metropolis.
The chapters attest to the complexity of land property rights in real contexts and introduce into historical analysis the concept of institutional bricolage proposed by the Critical Institutionalism school of thought. Beyond the written rules (rules-in-form), social practices are what explain the establishment and evolution of sets of rules-in-use, within social and environmental frameworks conditioned by both endogenous and exogenous factors. The case studies, which span from 1510 to 1920, examine struggles and experiences of access to land (and water) on three continents, focusing on territories in present-day Brazil, Mexico, Mozambique, Kenya, the Philippines, and India. Beneath the apparent diversity of situations and outcomes lies a common denominator that underscores the agency of local societies and the dynamic nature of property relations.
The book is aimed at researchers and students of Global History, Institutional History, Economic History, Social History, Social Anthropology, and Hispanic Studies, and will also appeal to consultants in development agencies and NGOs.
1. Institutional Pluralism, Property Rights, and Bricolage: A Conceptual
Proposition
2. The Carioca Experience: Landholding Practices and
Institutional Bricolage of Property Rights in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in the
18th and 19th Centuries 3: The Customary Land Market: Conflicts and
Judiciary Rulings around Monetary Land Transfers in the Transition from
Colonial to Liberal Mexico (18th19th Centuries)
4. Between European and
African Norms: Land Tenure Rituals, Property Rights and Power in Early Modern
Mozambique
5. Formal Law, Informal Interests: Race, Violence, and Bricolage
in the Water Legislation of the East Africa Protectorate, 18951920
6. Asian
Landowners in the Early Modern Philippines: Examining the Composición de
Tierras in Pagsanjan, Laguna, 1697
7. Adapting, Negotiating, and Imposing:
Social and Normative Dimensions of Portuguese Land Policies in Goa
(15101570). Conclusion
José-Miguel Lana-Berasain is Full Professor of Economic History at the Public University of Navarre in Pamplona-Iruña, Spain. His research interests include property rights, institutions for collective action, common pool resources, agricultural markets, labor and standards of living. He was Editor of the journal Historia Agraria.
