Land Tenure Center Newsletter
Number 79, Spring 2000, p. 11-12
From Reconstruction to Decon-struction: Undermining Black Landownership, Political Independence, and Community through Partition Sales of Tenancies in Common, by Thomas W. Mitchell, March 2000, 67 pages, $7.
http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/rp132.html
Extraordinary levels of land loss have patterned the landownership of the rural African American community in the past half-century. This paper focuses on one of the primary causes of involuntary land loss—partition sales of black-owned land held under tenancies in common. The paper advocates government intervention, maintaining that the problem of fractionated heir property within the rural, African American community justifies more fundamental reform of common property law and the creation of government institutions that can help owners of heir property.
Environmental Justice: Avoiding the Difficulty of Proving Discriminatory Intent in Hazardous Waste Siting Decisions, by Melissa Kiniyalocts, April 2000, 24 pages, $4.
http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/wp36.html
Contrary to general public perception that environmental hazards are borne equally, the risks and accompanying burdens of exposure to environmental contaminants are distributed disproportionately along racial and class lines. The environmental justice movement has received much recent attention as being an extension of the civil rights movement, where advocates have demanded fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. This paper focuses on the difficulty that plaintiffs wishing to challenge hazardous waste siting in their communities have in proving that the siting decision was based on racial factors.
Recent Reforms of the Urban Housing System in Central and East Europe, by William C. Thiesenhusen, April 2000,
62 pages, $7.
http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/wp35.html
The urban housing system in most of Central and East Europe (CEE) is undergoing decentralization, deregulation, and privatization together with other basic changes. This paper describes the urban housing model of the CEE before reform and analyzes changes to that model that began with the privatization reforms in the early 1990s. The paper details the strengths and weaknesses of the reforms and suggests that some resource distribution inequities have been accentuated under reform. It discusses urban housing issues and related matters that are being transformed as state socialism is replaced by a market economy.
A Comparative Study of Land Tenure, Property Boundaries, and Dispute Resolution: Examples from Bolivia and Norway, by Mark R.G. Goodale and Per Kåre Sky, March 2000, 28 pages, $4.
http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/wp34.html
This paper compares and contrasts patterns of land tenure, property boundaries, and dispute resolution in Bolivia and Norway. By placing these examples side by side, the authors show common strategies while recognizing the diversity to be found in the ways that people relate to land, revealing how people interact with their bounded environments and the various meanings that they construct through such environments.
Land Law in Ghana: Contradiction between Anglo-American and Customary Conceptions of Tenure and Practices, by Lennox Kwame Agbosu, March 2000, 32 pages, $4.
http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/wp33.html
It would appear that the English common law was grafted onto Ghanaian communal societies without taking into account the differences between the early 19th-century capitalist economic structures and the egalitarian communal institutions of Ghana. Both systems of law reflect distinctively different economic structures. That oversight laid the foundations for the conflicts between the customary law and practice and the Anglo-American common law, its notions and conceptions of tenure. The paper explores the conflict that developed, which has become one of the most formidable obstacles to socioeconomic development in Ghana since colonial times.
"A Glimpse of Change in Albania’s Post-Communist Countryside," by Harold Lemel. February 2000, $4. Reprinted from: Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, vol. 38, no. 1 (January/March 1999), p. 21–34.
"Free Markets Deep in the Heart of Texas," by Jane E. Larson. February 2000, $7. Reprinted from: Georgetown Law Journal, vol. 84, no. 2 (December 1995), p. 179–260.
All publications in the Land Tenure Center Publication Series issued since 1988 are available. Many publications are available online, as is the order form for ordering paper copies. Prices refer to buyers in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Japan; documents are free elsewhere. <http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/pubs.html>
Copyright © 2000 by Land Tenure Center and Board of Regents, University of Wisconsin. All rights reserved.
Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for noncommercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies.
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