The allotments scheme was a complex and diverse social, political, and economic movement that provided the labouring classes with small plots of land, usually no larger than one-eighth of an acre, on which to grow vegetables. From the late nineteenth century to the end of the First World War in 1918, the East End of London experienced an overwhelming increase in allotment cultivation and provision. Working-class men in the boroughs of Hackney, Poplar, East Ham, and West Ham participated in the allotments scheme for a variety of reasons. Allotments were places in which a working man could grow his own food with his familys help to supplement low, casual or seasonal wages, and his gardening kept him out of the pub and on the land. During the war period, food prices increased to intolerable levels in the East End so that the allotment was one of the few ways to reasonably feed the family, especially for the casual dockers. East Enders maintained personal and collective connections to the land that they had lost both through the Enclosure Acts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the urban sprawl of the early twentieth century. Finally, allotment gardening provided the healthy leisure activities of exercise, horticultural education, and civic participation. </p><p>The allotment was embedded in a social ethic that espoused industriousness, sobriety, respectability, and independence and in this way was a middle class solution to a working class problem. Yet, working men adopted the scheme as their own with enthusiasm and dedication and created natural spaces in the degraded landscape of the East End. By 1916, with the passage of the Cultivation of Lands Order, the East End boasted thousands of allotments growing vegetables on Londons vacant lots largely due to the persistent demands of residents on their local borough councils. The allotment association provided East End men with an unparalleled opportunity for grassroots political participation and gave way to a marked increase in working-class political awareness during the period. East Enders gained a foothold in local, regional, metropolitan, and later national politics for the first time in decades. The allotment in the East End also significantly changed the environment in which it was situated. The green space improved the esthetic of the area, adding to the general well-being of all of the boroughs citizens. East End allotments brought life to an area that many believed was lifeless. Not only did working men prove they could bring their sooty surroundings to life, but that they could also bring back to life the long-latent self-sufficiency of their ancestors. They were attracted to the scheme at a higher rate than many of the other 28 London boroughs because of their poverty, their maintained connection to green space, their cultural and political interest in land, and their profound sense of the loss of the land and the independence it brought.

No description available.

The allotments scheme was a complex and diverse social, political, and economic movement that provided the labouring classes with small plots of land, usually no larger than one-eighth of an acre, on which to grow vegetables. From the late nineteenth century to the end of the First World War in 1918, the East End of London experienced an overwhelming increase in allotment cultivation and provision. Working-class men in the boroughs of Hackney, Poplar, East Ham, and West Ham participated in the allotments scheme for a variety of reasons. Allotments were places in which a working man could grow his own food with his familys help to supplement low, casual or seasonal wages, and his gardening kept him out of the pub and on the land. During the war period, food prices increased to intolerable levels in the East End so that the allotment was one of the few ways to reasonably feed the family, especially for the casual dockers. East Enders maintained personal and collective connections to the land that they had lost both through the Enclosure Acts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the urban sprawl of the early twentieth century. Finally, allotment gardening provided the healthy leisure activities of exercise, horticultural education, and civic participation. </p><p>The allotment was embedded in a social ethic that espoused industriousness, sobriety, respectability, and independence and in this way was a middle class solution to a working class problem. Yet, working men adopted the scheme as their own with enthusiasm and dedication and created natural spaces in the degraded landscape of the East End. By 1916, with the passage of the Cultivation of Lands Order, the East End boasted thousands of allotments growing vegetables on Londons vacant lots largely due to the persistent demands of residents on their local borough councils. The allotment association provided East End men with an unparalleled opportunity for grassroots political participation and gave way to a marked increase in working-class political awareness during the period. East Enders gained a foothold in local, regional, metropolitan, and later national politics for the first time in decades. The allotment in the East End also significantly changed the environment in which it was situated. The green space improved the esthetic of the area, adding to the general well-being of all of the boroughs citizens. East End allotments brought life to an area that many believed was lifeless. Not only did working men prove they could bring their sooty surroundings to life, but that they could also bring back to life the long-latent self-sufficiency of their ancestors. They were attracted to the scheme at a higher rate than many of the other 28 London boroughs because of their poverty, their maintained connection to green space, their cultural and political interest in land, and their profound sense of the loss of the land and the independence it brought.

The nineteenth century was an era that great centralization and codification attempts were realized in the Ottoman Empire. One of these attempts was the Ottoman Land Code of 1858, which put various land regulations throughout the empire into a standard code. But this standard Code gave different results when applied to different regions which had their own characteristic features. Eastern Anatolia, which had an autonomous position since its incorporation to the Ottoman Empire, was also in the scope of the Land Code. The object of this study is to examine the implementation of the Land Code of 1858 in eastern Anatolia and the impacts of this implementation process in the region. Indeed, the general situation of the region greatly disaffected the implementation of the Code in eastern Anatolia. Because of the dominant disorder within the region and problems of the state in these lands, the Land Code could not be properly implemented in eastern Anatolia. The Land Code and the title deeds, which were distributed in accordance with the Code, were so important that they became the base of later ownership claims. Therefore, the implementation of the Code had deep and long lasting effects on the land patterns and social relations in the region. In this respect, this study will evaluate the implementation process of the Land Code throughout eastern Anatolia and the socio-economic transformation of the region as a result of this process.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sci.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1999.

Crises of food production, poverty and deepening inequality are common problems around the world and constitute the distinctive features of the global social landscape including the poorer regions. In the poorer regions and in Southern Africa particularly, land is a key asset in sustaining livelihoods. Ironically, the majority of the people in these poorer regions are landless. The land resource is however of crucial importance to the economies of the Southern African region contributing a major share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment. Colonial land policies institutionalised racial inequality with regard to land in southern Africa. Recent attempts to confront the consequences of historical land expropriation and to redress contemporary land-based inequities, discriminatory legislation and institutions have generated renewed racial conflict in the sub region and created a life of insecurity on the continent, particularly in the southern African region. The objective of human security is to achieve safety from chronic threats such as hunger, disease etc, and secure protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily lives. Land policies are of paramount importance in pursuit of human security. Access to land in this regard determines who lives or dies. The study explores post independence and post apartheid land policies in southern Africa using South Africa and Zimbabwe as case studies. It interrogates the linkage between land policy and human security; in particular determining how land policies affect human security. Recent activities in both countries - land invasions and economic collapse in Zimbabwe and high rate of unemployment, inequality and poverty in South Africa - attest to the land issue and clearly spell out the need for land reform. The study shows that Africa’s disadvantaged position (in power and wealth terms) in the international system has made it difficult for African states to address local or national preferences on the issue of land access. Major donor countries and international finance institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF have tended to prevail on African governments to adopt market liberalization mechanisms in tackling the land question. The argument behind this is that land should be given to those who can work it the most and productively while the returns can be distributed to all. As such, the market should be left to determine who has access to land. But the market oriented economic policies which African governments are often forced to adopt through structural adjustment programmes are essentially designed to strengthen multi-national corporations and to integrate elites in the southern African region into the international capitalist system. The reward-and-punishment system facilitated by the free market economy may benefit the local elite but it alienates the poor and undermines human security. Human dignity, food security and poverty reduction demand development agencies, governments and other organisations responsibly devise policies and strategies that will enable assets building and promote self-reliance of poor people and communities. Human security comprising food security, environmental security of individuals, and social and political security among others is critically affected by access to land.

This paper studies the policy changes that have led to the design and early implementation of the land restitution program in Colombia. I use the land reform literature to frame land reform efforts in Colombia within the larger ideological discussion on land reform. The study maps out the roles of the main actors that influenced the actions of government regarding land reform and their role in shaping the present policies affecting land restitution. The paper argues that although the land restitution program provides an opportunity to initiate a peace building process and should be seriously considered as a measure to compensate the victims of the armed conflict, the present rural development model is an impediment to its success. Although, the more progressive coalition was able to achieve the approval of the land restitution program, the success of the program relies entirely on the wider rural development model being currently embraced in the country. The present rural development model puts an emphasis on the exploitation of extractive resources and other mega projects responding to global market demands; while illicit crops continue to provide an easy and profitable livelihood opportunity for many in the countryside. Such development does not support the livelihoods of returnees and thus does not compliment the land restitution program. The success of the land restitution program thus remains in doubt. The reason is that powerful actors support a neoliberal development model that continues to dominate the political agenda.

The phenomenon of the farm attack has engendered an angry debate in South Africa today. Controversially, the South African media has paid great attention to violence against white farmers amidst a seemingly endless flood of violence against black farm workers. The now commonplace tales of farm attacks incite racial tension and provoke paranoia, leading one to question why they are repeated at all. Recent works by South African authors have engaged this question, including Jonny Steinberg's Midlands (2002), J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999), and Breyten Breytenbach's Dog Heart (1998). Critics have accused these works of perpetuating racism with their grim depictions of black-on-white violence but have failed to recognize the manner in which these authors contextualize the violence. I argue that each work registers the farm attack as a land claim, made in an era of failed land reform. Furthermore, these works reflexively explore the pragmatics of circulating the stories.

This study seeks to examine the contribution of land reform programmes to beneficiaries and focuses on post settlement development for beneficiaries once they have resettled on the farm. The contribution of land reform programmes is examined in this study through the investigation of the Rocky Drift Farm, a rural area in Muden, KwaZulu-Natal Province, This case study has been chosen because it became one of the first Land Reform Pilot Projects transferred in 1997 to a Trust, representing a large number of owners (232 in total), under the government assisted land redistribution programme. It is now 12 years since the residents have returned to Rocky Drift Farm and this period is regarded as sufficiently long enough to enable the critical examination of development progress relating to land reform since 1997. This research has hypothesized that "whilst the Land Reform Programme does generate some benefits for beneficiaries, it has proved to be an inadequate mechanism for improving the quality of life for beneficiaries, and thus needs to be supplemented by a number of other key support programmes in order to fully contribute to the lives of the poor". While this investigation has proven beyond reasonable doubt that the lives of of the beneficiaries have not fully improved as a result of Land Reform Programmes at Rocky Drift, improvement in infrastructure and service provision such as upgrading of 3 roads. construction and upgrading of 5 schools, building of 1 creche and the supply of portable water, has been noticed. Furthermore, benefits such as a sense of belonging, identity, trust, hope and reconciliation, resulting from the implementation of the Rocky Drift Project have also not gone unnoticed. However, despite the benefits mentioned above, it is strongly argued by this dissertation that these benefits are inadequate to boldly conclude that land reform programmes have improved the standard of life for Rock Drift residents after 12 years of resettlement. Therefore, this study recommends, inter-alia, the following supplementary measures as boost for land reform programmes to enable the beneficiaries to fully benefit from these programmes, during post settlement; • improving communication, co-operation and co-ordination among the government departments, • maintaining the continuity of the key stakeholders, • establishment of agri-villages; • link land reform projects with lDPs: • re-establishing the Rocky Drift community structures and the • letting of unused portions of Rocky Drift Farm, to mention a few. Lastly, since the Rocky Drift Project piloted other farms, this study also recommends that a further investigation needs to be conducted. This will draw a comparative analysis and critically examine whether or not the lessons from this project were used to improve other similar projects. / Thesis (M.T.R.P.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2009.

No description available.