{"id":17090,"date":"2022-03-16T19:32:56","date_gmt":"2022-03-16T19:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=17090"},"modified":"2025-04-08T09:47:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T09:47:01","slug":"land-and-mortgage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/land-and-mortgage","title":{"rendered":"Land and the Mortgage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

We are pleased to feature a collection of blog posts from the authors of our new book, \u201cLand and the Mortgage: History, Culture, Belonging\u201d<\/a> (edited by Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Parker Shipton).<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Land and the Mortgage<\/strong>
Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Parker Shipton<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mortgaging of land, a risky practice usually\ntreated as just an economic and legal contract, has <\/a>needed\na broader set of perspectives for a fuller, more humanist understanding. Most of the existing scholarly\nliterature on land and mortgages has been written by economists and legal\nspecialists, reflecting the perspectives of their disciplinary traditions.\nLacking are\nassessments from a wider range of disciplines in the social sciences and\nhumanities, drawing upon historical experiences, cultural meanings, and locally\ninformed perspectives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

This edited collection<\/a>, drawing on historical and\nobservational research in different parts of the world, is meant to help fill\nthat gap. It examines mortgaging as a social and\ncultural phenomenon to show its origins, variation, and effects on human lives\nand communities. Here anthropologists, historians, and economists explore\narchival, printed, and ethnographic evidence about mortgage. The book shows how\nmortgages affect people on the ground, where local forms of mutuality mix with\nlarger bureaucracies. Tracing origins of land titling, pledging, and the\nmortgage in over millennia and incorporating findings from authors\u2019 original\nfield research, the book explores effects of government, bank, and aid agency\nattempts and impositions meant to encourage mortgage lending and\nborrowing.  It shows how these mix in\npractice, in different languages, currencies, and contexts, with locally rooted\nunderstandings, and how all parties have sought, and too often failed, to make\nadjustments. The outcomes of mortgage in Africa, Europe, Asia, and America\nchallenge economic development orthodoxies, calling for a human-centered\nexploration of this age-old institution. \nIt must take account, we insist, of emotions, vulnerabilities, and\nhistories of unexpected outcomes, as shown in different societies, cultures,\nand environmental and political conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An introductory chapter\nby Daivi Rodima-Taylor lays out basic concepts and discusses the history of the\nmortgage institution and land financialization. It shows how social and\ncultural concerns must be added to the legal and economic, foreshadows some recent\nturns to electronic and crypto-finance, and explores the promises and pitfalls\nof lending guided by algorithms. The book then turns back in time. Other authors\noffer deep historical perspectives from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, medieval\nEngland, and colonial United States to illuminate some foundations and\nvariations of the mortgage institution. \nThey show how it has changed over time in assumptions about possession\nand ownership, the duration of loans and debts, the fairness of flows, and the\nrightness of sacred and secular attempts at governance. The chapter by Michael\nHudson describes land tenure in the ancient Near East, while highlighting its\nfundamentally political dimensions. Elaborating on the history of mortgage as a\nlegal device in Anglo-American law, David Seipp discusses the development of\nmortgage in medieval and early modern England and argues that the nature of it\nhas profoundly changed in contemporary society where it has become a formalized\nfinancial tool with a primary goal of acquiring property. Winifred Rothenberg\u2019s\nchapter examines, with carefully compiled numerical data, the first recorded\nmortgages in colonial Massachusetts, highlighting town-country relations, the\ncontributions of mortgage credit to reducing landlessness and poverty, and for\nmany moneylenders, the extended use of mortgages as a form of annuity. Both\nborrowers and lenders invested in the mortgage and the colony in paper money,\nwith enough confidence to change the nature and scale of the colonial economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning to modern times\nand including authors\u2019 own field observations, the book examines the human\neconomy of mortgage as constructed and remade by people in their daily\npractices. Mortgaging is shown to relate directly to inheritance, insurance, and\ntaxation, as well as local politics. A few\nchapters of the anthology examine the still little-explored topic of\nembeddedness of land pledging and mortgaging in African countries in both vernacular\nand formal bureaucracies. Sara Berry\u2019s chapter elaborates on the ways social\ngroupings, such as families and polities, mediate debt and property. Kristine\nJuul\u2019s chapter studies the relationship between land mortgaging and taxation in\nrural communities of Senegal and its impact on property rights and identity. The\nchapters of the volume also caution against the assumption that lending against\nland is a panacea for economic insecurity in regions undergoing transition and\nresettlement. The study by Mette Kusk and Lotte Meinert explores contested land\nsales in northern Uganda after long-lasting armed conflict and displacement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Focusing on a different transitional context, the chapter by Stefan\nDorondel, Daivi Rodima-Taylor, and Marioara Rusu explores the reinvention of land mortgage in\nRomania after a fifty-year interruption by the socialist regime. The analysis\nsituates the post-socialist rural financialization within the histories of\ndiverse tenure reforms in the Romanian countryside, and among a multiplicity of\nformal and informal actors that shape local economic practices.\nThe micro-politics of resistance is central in the chapter by Nate Coben and\nMelissa Wrapp that compares the cases in South Africa and Ireland where rural\nlandholders devise strategies to evade mortgage offers from formal financial\ninstitutions while relying heavily on informal social modes of trust. These chapters\ncall attention to new ways of resistance and novel political imaginings around\nmortgages and their failures to solve social problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book opens difficult\nissues of attempted international aid. Tariq Rahman\u2019s contribution discusses\nthe recent state-led, World Bank-inspired effort to digitize the land revenue\nsystem in Lahore. Rahman\u2019s ethnographic analysis demonstrates that governing\nland property in the old city remains both a social and material practice\u2014and despite\nthe emerging elements of e-governance, deeply embedded in vernacular knowledge\nand hierarchies. The contributions by Parker Shipton explore mortgage as a form\nof entrustment and counter-entrustment that relies heavily on language, metaphor,\nand difficult translation. Combining glimpses of the mortgage in Eurasian,\nNorth American and African history, Shipton outlines the often traumatic effects\nof land loss upon family farmers and dependents, warning of risks to farming\npeople and communities as the mortgage spreads to rural tropical settings.  He also shows why the causes and effects of\nmortgaging, such a uniquely human institution, spread well beyond humankind to\nother animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tracing\norigins of land titling, pledging, and the mortgage over millennia into\ncontemporary forms, our book thus explores effects of colonial policies, state\nimpositions, and locally rooted understandings as they have combined and\nrecombined in diverse regions across the world. We\nhope that this collection will prompt other scholars to devote more attention\nto the peculiar and culture-bound institution of mortgage and compel them to\nrethink the premises of landholding, finance, and trust in new and productive\nways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Beyond Binaries: The Social Organization of Land Mortgage in the Global South<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Stefan Dorondel<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lending against real property is occurring in\nsignificant volumes globally. Homeownership remains a\nprincipal means of wealth creation for most Americans and Western Europeans.\nMortgage is also an important part of land titling reforms that seek to enhance\nagricultural productivity and rural entrepreneurship in the Global South. The\noutcomes of such initiatives have been uneven and ambiguous, and remain a hotly\ndebated policy issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our\nchapters in the new edited volume, Land\nand the Mortgage: History, Culture, Belonging, <\/em>study mortgage as central to\nbroader struggles over belonging and identity. We call attention to an\nincreasing plurality of property forms, entitlements, and calculative\npractices, as well as the historical continuities in the relations of\ninequality shaping the mortgage lending. The edited collection argues that the\nuneasy partnerships of the formal and informal, public and private have resided\nin mortgage and titling institutions throughout history. In an era of\nintensifying population mobility, agricultural commercialization, and political\ntransitions in many parts of the world, these questions carry broader import. Attempts\nto institute mortgage lending in many settings in the Global South testify to\nthe endurance of pre-existing authority patterns and recombinant property forms\nthat mix frameworks from different periods and property regimes. Reforms that\ninstitute exclusive land rights may exacerbate political conflicts and economic\ninequalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We suggest that examining the social and\ntemporal embeddedness of wealth transfers such as land pledging and mortgaging\ncan provide novel perspectives into the social organization of debt and\nproperty in the Global South. Land\nproperty has been at the center\nof the\ninteraction between custom and statutory law in Ghana, West Africa (Sara Berry in this volume<\/a>). While the economic and legal changes among the\nAsante in Ghana have aimed to promote individual titling of land claims, family\nproperty has not become a thing of the past: \u201ccredit and indebtedness continue to create and\nrework social relationships, as well as enabling and\/or constraining economic\nactivities\u201d (p. 97). As the pledging or pawning of landed property has increased,\nrelationships between people continue to play a significant role in negotiating\nloans and foreclosure among the Asante. Commodification of land has therefore\nnot diminished the importance of social relationships in people\u2019s economic\nlives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decentralization reforms have therefore brought\nrenewed attention to local, \u201ctraditional\u201d forms of organization and authority\nas new, alternative sources of legitimacy and governance (see also Geschiere\n2009; Lund 2012; Sikor et al. 2017). Such intermingling of old and new\nauthorities, normative templates, and collective and private forms of property\nalso characterizes land mortgage in postsocialist Eastern Europe. Exploring the reinvention of the economic\npractice of land mortgage in Romania after fifty years of interruption caused\nby the socialist regime, Stefan Dorondel, Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Marioara Rusu (this volume<\/a>,\np. 191) highlight\nthe multiplicity\nof formal and informal actors and hierarchies that define the economic\npractices in local communities. During the socialist era, most of the productive\nland was concentrated into state and collective farms, and the postsocialist\nland reform of the 1990s sought to \u201cmodernize\u201d the country by re-establishing\nprivate property in land. Land markets were expected to facilitate social and\neconomic restructuring of the agrarian communities, and mortgage was viewed as\nthe primary vehicle for fueling rural investment and productivity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postsocialist economic reforms in Eastern\nEurope were largely inspired by neoliberal agendas that aimed to establish\nfunctional land markets, and were accompanied by a retreat of the state from\nthe agricultural sector. However, since the start of Romania\u2019s land restitution\nreforms in 1989, land-based lending has remained rather limited. The market\nvalue of agricultural land is low, and the restitution process has suffered\nfrom unclear ownership records and incomplete legal frameworks. While Romania has experienced some\nsuccess recently with improving the situation with rural credit and expanding\nthe range of eligible borrowers and forms of loan collateral, land reform is\nstill an ongoing process. The recent subsidies of the European Union have helped\nin creating new opportunities for the agricultural sector, but it is up to the\ncountry\u2019s regulators and administrators to facilitate an enabling economic\nenvironment for small and medium-sized farms and eliminate blockages present in\nthe credit market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Romanian landholding has been historically\ndiverse and governed by inequalities and social differentiation. Much of the\nincome of rural inhabitants was derived from informal or side activities during\nthe socialist as well as postsocialist periods, and smallholdings remained\nintermeshed in broader work-exchange networks. We argue that in such\ntransitional settings, formalization of land claims is a contested and\npolitical process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Chris Hann suggests, in order to understand\nland property beyond the formal codes of individual or collective rights, we\nneed to look at the claims and entitlements of persons as members of\ncommunities (2003). During the socialist era, new forms\nof entitlement were created largely through informal practices that brought\ninto contact new and old rules and social identities. Despite official\nideology, socialist communes retained and developed a considerable degree of\nindividual entrepreneurship and resource rights outside formal rules (see also\nVerdery 1996). Local power relations have continued to shape the rural\nlandscape even in the postsocialist era. State bureaucrats have been able to\nassert their interests on the outcomes of land restitution reforms in many\nareas of the country, often replicating the pre-reform patterns of\ndifferentiation and inequality (Dorondel 2016).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nnew ideologies of market and private property are therefore modified by older\nsocio-cultural norms and templates. The cultural practices of mutuality that\noriginate from the pre-socialist times affect the application of later state\nideologies in local communities and impact the commercialization of land. At\nthe same time, we contend that the \u201cmoral economy\u201d explanation is not\nsufficient for understanding the reasons for the slow take-off of land mortgage\nin Romania. Both socialist and postsocialist land reforms reflected the\nattempts of the state trying to render local spaces legible and redraw\nadministrative boundaries and property rules (see also Scott 1998). One could\nsay that both collectivization and decollectivization reforms have therefore\nentailed attempts of a modernist restructuring of the agrarian economy, with a\ngoal to enhance economic and political control from above.\n\nDiverse collectivist ideas and norms of reciprocity\nthus endure and evolve through formal administrative regimes, affecting local\nforms and practices of property and belonging. Land claims and\ntransactions continue to be embedded in interpersonal networks and norms of\nmutuality. At the same time, legal and administrative devices to manage real\nproperty have evolved toward growing exclusion of lateral claims, use rights,\nand ownership histories. This imbalance has a potential to deepen dispossession\nof low-income mortgagors globally who use their informal networks to manage\ntheir formal credit obligations and extend their everyday norms of mutuality to\nthe anonymous mortgage markets increasingly managed through algorithms. The\n\u201cnew\u201d mortgage borrowers in the Global South may be especially vulnerable.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Distressed Publics: Circumventing the Mortgage from South Africa to Ireland<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nate Coben and Melissa K. Wrapp<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many\nacademics and activists have critiqued the mortgage industry as a central\nengine of global financialization. Indeed, mortgages have long been espoused as\nvehicles of liberalization, liquidity, and economic development. And yet in our\ntwo very different field sites\u2014South Africa and Ireland\u2014we saw people doing a\nlot of work to avoid mortgages altogether, driven by a healthy skepticism of\nwhat the mortgage could do for them. This chapter emerged from our shared\ninterest in the Janus-faced quality of mortgages in a cross-cultural context.\nOne way of reading the fact that people are not so keen on these mortgage-based\npolitical projects would be to see them as the failure of developmentalist and\nfinancial modernity\u2013in other words, as the result of a lack of cultural or\nfinancial resources with which to take advantage of these financial\ninstruments. We, however, see people quite aware of what they are passing up on\nand why. Rather than reading failure and lack into these evasions, in our\nchapter we read mortgage avoidance as creative, nurturing new political\nimaginaries outside and around the mortgage, often drawing on networks of\nreciprocity and kin. We invite readers to think through the seemingly atavistic\nmovements that refute modernist policies as examples of emerging \u201cdistressed\npublics\u201d\u2014where the publics are forming in response to the ostensible failure of\nfiscal and developmental policy style themselves in ways that appear\ntraditionalist, clannish, and familial. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

South\nAfrica and Ireland are very different contexts to be observing the relative\ninventions and innovations that emerge out of people\u2019s avoidance of, or escape\nfrom, mortgage relations. The two countries each have very different\npostcolonial histories.  There is a very meaningful difference between\nbeing the poster child for European austerity policies, and a kind of\npostcolonial laboratory for liberal developmentalist projects from around the\nglobe. Nonetheless, each has been indelibly shaped by an explicit\npoliticization of questions relating to real property. In the case of Irish\nnationalism, security of tenure and anti-eviction movements were at the heart\nof the movement for independence from Britain, while in South Africa the\nhistory of apartheid and the racialization of housing and real estate were at\nthe forefront of concerns for a new post-apartheid nation. In the chapter, we\nexamine two large-scale public projects, the provision of post-apartheid social\nhousing in South Africa and the fiscal resolution of an unprecedented mortgage\nmarket crisis in Ireland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nIreland, we describe contemporary lay litigant movements that are refashioning\nnationalist anti-eviction histories to provide \u201cdistressed mortgagors,\u201d\nhomeowners who have defaulted on their mortgages for some time, with a rhetoric\nand set of dubious schemes to exit their mortgage arrangements while\nmaintaining possession of their home under threat of repossession. Meanwhile,\nin South Africa, due to a confluence of financial and political interests,\nhomeownership came to be positioned as a vital element of post-apartheid\nrestorative justice. However, despite significant investment in initiatives to\nextend loans to first-time homebuyers, uptake has been limited, with many\npreferring to vie for access to state-subsidized housing projects, past and\npresent, instead. We found it compelling to think through the commonalities\nbetween our two field sites, not only because the mortgage is such a favored\npolicy instrument, but also because the reach of the mortgage is something of a\ntrace of European imperialism (which provided the legal landscape for its\ntransplantation).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         The\nkey commonality we first see in our work is that the private property\ninnovation of the mortgage was indeed shaping new, modern publics; but not\nnecessarily the ones that fiscal policymakers, NGOs, and governments were\nhoping for and expecting. The publics we saw emerging in the relative failures\nof mortgage-based strategies to resolve economic problems were compelling in\nhow they played with the trappings of traditionality to assert themselves.\nInstead of submitting to the rigid hierarchy of formalized debt obligations,\nour interlocutors preferred more flexible relational dynamics found in\ninterpersonal agreements and alternative networks of reciprocity, indebtedness,\nand power. Thus, we analyze these resulting patterns of sociality emerging out\nof mortgage avoidance as \u201cdistressed publics.\u201d By \u201cdistressed\u201d we mean to\ngesture not only to the immediate conditions of economic precarity that these\nwould-be (or wouldn\u2019t-be) mortgagors teeter on, but also to a seeming\nresurgence in clannishness in anti-mortgage responses (that is, distressed in\nthe sense of something new, made old; think distressed denim jeans). We see\nthat projected traditionality in some sense as a displacement of the actually\nvery antiquated heart of the mortgage. At its core, no matter how dressed up in\nshiny new clothes, the mortgage is a feudal thing, continually rediscovered and\nre-presented as a highly modern answer for different problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more in chapter by\nNate Coben and Melissa K. Wrapp, \u201cDistressed Publics: Circumventing the\nMortgage from South Africa to Ireland,\u201d in Land\nand the Mortgage: History, Culture, Belonging<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Mortgage, Risk, and Taxation in Rural Senegal<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kristine Juul <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a widespread perception that\nmortgage is still rare in rural Africa, as most people lack formal titles to\nland. In a northern cattle-trading town of Senegal, I was surprised to find out\nthat mortgaging was rather common, and people were losing their houses and farm\nplots. As elsewhere in rural Sahel,\nland is allocated free of charge by local government or village chiefs through\na small fee to cover the administrative costs, but it does not become private\nproperty. Despite this, local credit-institutions have increasingly been\nencouraging herders to take out loans, using their houses and animals as\ncollateral. Local engagement in mortgages started in 2004, when various credit\ninstitutions opened branches in the town, providing people who were short of\nfunds with an alternative to soliciting money from family and friends. While beneficial for some, these credit schemes have also led to serious indebtedness. From\nhaving acquired access to land as a function of membership and belonging,\nmortgaging contributes to transform people into simple tenants, at risk of\nlosing the right of occupancy if certain economic obligations to formal sector\ninstitutions were not met. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loans\nand credit are not new to the inhabitants of northern Senegal. Local livestock traders have long practiced informal credit and informal\nlending agreements, with large debts as a matter of interpersonal skills of\nnetworking, trust, and reputation. Furthermore, traditional rotating savings\nclubs (tontine) have provided funds for micro-scale activities, mainly among\nwomen (Diaw 1995; Gu\u00e9rin et al. 2014; 2015). Even with the arrival of formal credit\ninstitutions, these borrowing patterns have not been abandoned. What has\nhappened is rather that people combine multiple financial tools in ongoing\ncircuits of borrowing and repayment, where money borrowed from one creditor is\nused to repay another. Contrary to the intentions of the formal credit and\nmicrocredit systems, loans from formal microfinance institutions are therefore\nnot necessarily channeled into new economic activities. Instead, people are\nwilling to engage in formal borrowing to service their obligations in the informal\nsector in order not to lose face, trust and reputation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a town dominated\nby cattle trading, easier access to formal credit inevitably changes the\nconditions for livestock trading. As the herding sector is known not only to\nrely heavily on credit but also to be a risky one, formal credit institutions\nincreasingly resort to collateral that often includes land and housing.\nUnfortunately, the hasty development of the sector has implied that there is\nfrequently no proper assessment of the potential of the borrower to repay, or\nprecise and consistent procedures for handling the collateral. The difference\nbetween formal mortgaging and \u201cvoluntary sales\u201d often became irrelevant to\ndebtors, as the methods used by credit agents force debtors to sell vital assets\nor property to meet reimbursement conditions. This was the case of a small\nshopkeeper who felt obliged to sell his house to avoid the shameful and\ncounterproductive situation of having credit agents appearing at his shop\n\u201cevery other day\u201d when he was unable to service his loan due to an unexpected\nrent increase. Evidence from my fieldwork shows that loans based on mortgage and personal guarantees are\nwidespread. The microcredit\nlending market has been widely embraced by local entrepreneurs, with or without\ntitle deeds. Credit practices are therefore not limited to formal institutions\nbut coexist and interact with informal lending practices, often in ways that\nreinforce existing social hierarchies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That people engage in\ncredit arrangements based on mortgaging does not imply, however, that people do\nnot resist it or try to bend it in their favor. The widespread practice of\nrecycling microcredit loans into informal loans, or taking informal loans to\nrepay micro-loans, may solve certain immediate problems but does not alter the\nfact that formal social protection is in most cases ineffective or nonexistent.\nFrequently, default\nand foreclosure are prompted by illness or accidents besetting the debtor, or\nhis or her livestock. In such cases, foreclosure can turn out to be a very\nexpensive solution, not only for the debtor but also for the credit\ninstitutions involved, given that they are unlikely to be able to recover their\noutstanding claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore,\nthe weak legal position of collateral creates complications for foreclosure.\nWhile plots are owned by the state and the buildings seldom represent a value\nequivalent to the loans taken, they are still perceived by both lenders and\ndebtors as collateral. The lack of formal titling makes it difficult for\ncreditors to carry out a forced sale. Courts, hampered by hazy legal\nframeworks, are of little help. In order to compensate for this high risk,\ncredit institutions tend to use highly visible and punitive recovery methods to\ncompel the debtor to comply, and impose high interest rates to recover their\nlosses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A more\nconstructive pathway for invigorating the local economy may therefore be found\nin the provision of infrastructure and services financed through taxation.\nRobust public health care provision and other forms of social security may\noffer a fairly cost-efficient way to increase the ability of clients to service\ntheir debts and limit foreclosures. So far, the contributions of state and\nlocal government to the development of public services in northern Senegal, like\nin many other places in Africa, have been found wanting. This has not\nencouraged the population to demand greater public accountability. A more\nprogressive taxation system would encourage residents to pay taxes and\ncontribute to local development while gaining more secure rights over their\nlanded assets and thereby to mortgaging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The spatial or\nterritorial dimension of taxation and its relation to property is an often\nneglected but important issue. Taxation creates and bolsters sanctioned\nauthority in the countryside through homogeneous institutions and local\nrepresentation that can ensure compliance with state regulation (see also\nPeluso and Vandergeest 2001). It provides an opportunity for states and local\ngovernment to demarcate spatial fields in which they can exercise control. On\nthe individual level, payment of taxes may expand the rights of citizenship,\nunderscoring membership of a certain group and compliance with the state or\nother authorities, which is likely to encourage protection of the rights and\nproperties of the citizen. Taxation is therefore one of the strategies used by\nindividuals and companies to make or improve their claims on land and resources\nor their claims of belonging (Juul 2006). The spatial dimension of taxation is therefore dependent on the\nexistence of a land market. Where land markets are poorly developed and\nconventional land registration systems nonexistent, taxation and mortgaging\nbecome challenging endeavors. In rural Senegal, where most land is supposed to\nbe inalienable and is ultimately under the control of the state, neither clear\nproperty rights nor property taxation are well developed. Taxation in other\nforms, however, still influences security of tenure, in ways that may turn out\nto be significant for capital formation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead\nof assuming that clearly defined property rights are a necessary prerequisite\nfor improving poor people\u2019s access to credit institutions, it is more important\nto first explore how informal credit and local taxation practices in rural\nSenegal have influenced perceptions of property, mortgage, and public service\nprovision. This places mortgage debt and property in a broader framework that\nconnects both the social practices and long-term conditionalities of debt as\nwell as the role of the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more in Kristine Juul\u2019s chapter\n\u201cTales of Mortgage, Risk and Taxation in Rural Senegal,\u201d in Land and\nthe Mortgage: History, Culture, Belonging<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

The World Bank, the Old City, and Liquid Land<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Tariq Rahman<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(first published in American Ethnologist)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lahore\nis an ancient city. Lahore is a megacity. Though I can think of nothing more\nclich\u00e9 to say about an Asian city than describing it as a \u201cland of contrasts,\u201d\nI do find the tension between Lahore\u2019s history and present to be a productive\none to think with when it comes to the city\u2019s land records. In this brief blog\npost, I consider a state-led, World Bank-inspired effort to modernize Lahore\u2019s\nland revenue system. During my ethnographic fieldwork I learned was that\ndespite tens of millions of dollars, years of effort, and an assortment of\nglobal experts, land in the old city had stubbornly refused its invitation to\nthe 21st century, instead clinging to Lahore\u2019s tumultuous, convoluted, and\nstill very present past. Why has the state\u2019s project failed? What might this\nhave to do with the qualities of land itself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2007, the World Bank\nlaunched the Land Records Management and Information Systems (LRMIS) project, a\n10-year, $115 million effort to digitize rural land records across Pakistan\u2019s\nPunjab province. Recalling economist Hernando de Soto\u2019s view of land in the\nGlobal South as \u201cdead capital\u201d whose awakening depended upon the establishment\nof modern property rights (2000), at the heart of LRMIS was the belief that\nempowerment in rural Punjab hinged upon making land liquid, or an asset that\ncould be quickly bought and sold. For the World Bank, whatever historical,\nsocial, or spiritual relationships to land that existed were worse than\nunimportant\u2014they were hindrances. Land was an asset to be leveraged against\nfuture profit (World Bank 2018). Rural Punjabis were stockbrokers who simply\nhadn\u2019t yet been given access to the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ncenterpiece of the LRMIS project was the removal of the patwari<\/em>, or the\ntraditional land revenue official. Patwaris<\/em> maintain manually drafted\nspreadsheets and maps pertaining to landownership in a given area, records that\noften date to the 19th century. In order for land to be bought and sold, patwaris<\/em>\nhave to issue sellers a fard<\/em>, or an official land record copy reflecting\nthe rights of ownership of land. In the eyes of the World Bank, patwaris<\/em>\nplayed a traditional, but ultimately obstructive human role. World Bank reports\nare quite hostile to patwaris<\/em>, describing them as \u201cpredatory middlemen\u201d\nand, most damningly, accusing them of \u201creducing the liquidity of family assets\ncomposed mostly or wholly of land\u201d (World Bank 2017b). For the World Bank,\nliquidity would naturally follow from the replacement of the patwari<\/em>\nwith a digital system, as the value of long-held but inaccessible local assets\nwould finally be unlocked. Under the decade-long LRMIS project, 10 million\npages of records were scanned, centuries-old maps were converted into GIS data,\nand 144 new computerized land record centers were opened across the Punjab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nWorld Bank hails LRMIS as a resounding success. Its website champions the\nproject as an example to developing countries in Africa, Latin America, South\nAsia, and Southeast Asia, and in 2017 the organization held an international\nconference in Bangkok, Thailand where government officials and development\nexperts gathered to learn from the LRMIS model (World Bank 2016). And yet, the\norganization admits that it was unable to completely eliminate the role of patwaris<\/em>.\nAs one article explains:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The software and the IT system, however,\nwere unable to resolve the land records conundrum on their own unless a\nsustained and a clear social strategy to include and promote the participation\nof the ancestral Patwari system within the new and sophisticated computerized\nsystem was set in place. The incentives to foster the involvement and\nparticipation of the Patwaris to clean and update the records was and remains\ncrucial. They continue to play a key role within the overall governance of the\nland records system, but in a regularized form with checks and balances. (World\nBank 2017a)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the World Bank project ended in 2017, in 2016 the Government of Punjab launched an effort to digitize land records in old city Lahore as an extension of the LRMIS project. Through conversations with local patwaris<\/em>, I learned more about the so-called \u201cland records conundrum\u201d that plagued digitization efforts. As with LRMIS, patwari<\/em> records in the old city had been scanned and made available at newly built land record centers. However, the system was encumbered by the countless number of discrepancies in patwari<\/em> records, which stem from shifting property regimes from the colonial through the postcolonial era, undocumented transfers after partition, and generations of inheritance and subdivision, issues that are magnified by the old city\u2019s dense residential settlements. Tracing the rightful ownership of land is typically a time-consuming process and requires visiting properties, consulting with neighbors, and tracing family lineages. Patwaris<\/em> told me that though their records had been scanned, their own role had not changed, as they were still needed to resolve the discrepancies in the now digitized record. In other words, land in old city Lahore was both physically and socially embedded in relations that exceeded digital representation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tariq Rahman\u2019s\nblog post was first published at: https:\/\/americanethnologist.org\/features\/reflections\/the-world-bank-the-old-city-and-liquid-land<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the full\nchapter \u201cGoverning the Old City: Land Records, Digitization, and Liquidity in\nLahore\u201d in Land and the Mortgage:\nHistory, Culture, Belonging<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diaw, Alioune. 1995. \u201cCommercialisation des petits ruminants au S\u00e9n\u00e9gal, le cas de l\u2019axe\nNord-Dakar\u201d [Marketing of small stock in Senegal, the case of the North-Dakar\naxis]. Th\u00e8se. Dakar: Ecole Inter-Etats de Sciences et Medicines\nV\u00e9t\u00e9rinaires (EISMV).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dourish, Paul.\n2017. The Stuff of Bits: An Essay on the Materialities of Information.<\/em>\nCambridge: MIT Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

French, Martin.\n2014. \u201cGaps in the Gaze: Informatic Practice and the Work of Public Health\nSurveillance.\u201d Surveillance & Society<\/em> 12 (2): 226\u201342. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.24908\/ss.v12i2.4750<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Geschiere, Peter. 2009. The Perils of Belonging:\nAutochthony, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Africa and Europe<\/em>. Chicago: University of\nChicago Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gray, Mary L., and\nSiddharth Suri. 2017. \u201cThe Humans Working Behind the AI Curtain.\u201d Harvard\nBusiness Review<\/em>, January 9, 2017. https:\/\/hbr.org\/2017\/01\/the-humans-working-behind-the-ai-curtain<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gu\u00e9rin, Isabelle, Sol\u00e8ne\nMorvant-Roux, and Magdalena Villareal. 2014. \u201cIntroduction.\u201d In Microfinance, Debt and Over-Indebtedness;\nJuggling with Money,<\/em> ed. Isabelle Gu\u00e9rin, Sol\u00e8ne Morvant-Roux, and\nMagdalena Villareal, 1\u201324.London: Routledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hann, Chris, and the Property Relations Group.\n2003. The Postsocialist Agrarian Question<\/em>. Munster: LIT Verlag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hetherington, Kregg. 2012. \u201cAgency,\nScale, and the Ethnography of Transparency.\u201d PoLAR: Political and Legal\nAnthropology Review<\/em> 35 (2): 242\u201347. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1111\/j.1555-2934.2012.01201.x<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hull, Matthew S. 2012. Government\nof Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan.<\/em> Berkeley:\nUniversity of California Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Irani, Lilly. 2015. \u201cJustice for\n\u2018Data Janitors.\u2019\u201d Public Books (blog). January 15, 2015. https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/justice-for-data-janitors\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Juul, Kristine. 2006.\n\u201cDecentralization, Land Taxation and Citizenship in Senegal.\u201d Development and Change<\/em> 37(4): 821\u201346.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latour, Bruno. 2007. Reassembling\nthe Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory.<\/em> Oxford: Oxford\nUniversity Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lund, Christian. 2013. \u201cThe Past and Space: On\nArguments in African Land Control.\u201d Africa <\/em>83(1): 14\u201335.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peluso,\nNancy, and Peter Vandergeest. 2001. \u201cGenealogies of the Political Forest and\nCustomary Rights in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.\u201d The Journal of Asian\nStudies<\/em> 60(3): 761\u2013812.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seaver, Nick. 2018. \u201cWhat Should an\nAnthropology of Algorithms Do?\u201d Cultural Anthropology<\/em> 33 (3): 375\u201385. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.14506\/ca33.3.04<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott, James. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How\nCertain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have Failed<\/em>. New Haven: Yale University\nPress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sikor, Thomas, Stefan Dorondel, Johannes Stahl, and\nPhuc Xuan To. 2017. When Things Become Property: Land Reform, Authority\nand Value in Postsocialist Europe and Asia<\/em>. New York: Berghahn Books.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith, Brian Cantwell. 1994. \u201cComing\nApart at the Seams: The Role of Computation in a Successor Metaphysics.\u201d Paper\nread at Intersection of the Real and the Virtual, June 2-4, at Stanford\nUniversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soto, Hernando De. 2000. The\nMystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere\nElse.<\/em> New York, NY: Basic Books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Verdery, Katherine. 1996. What Was Socialism and What\nComes Next? <\/em>Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

World Bank. 2016. \u201cIn Pakistan and\nBeyond, Land Records Get a Digital Upgrade.\u201d http:\/\/www.worldbank.org\/en\/news\/feature\/2017\/09\/20\/in-pakistan-and-beyond-land-records-get-a-digital-upgrade<\/a>.
\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. 2017a. \u201cLand Records Go Digital in Punjab, Pakistan.\u201d http:\/\/blogs.worldbank.org\/endpovertyinsouthasia\/land-records-go-digital-punjab-pakistan<\/a>.
\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. 2017b. \u201cPunjab Land Records Management and Information Systems Project.\u201d\nICR3719. http:\/\/documents.worldbank.org\/curated\/en\/632241498842804246\/Pakistan-Land-Records-Management-and-Information-Systems-Project<\/a>.
\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. 2018. \u201cLand.\u201d http:\/\/www.worldbank.org\/en\/topic\/land<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are pleased to feature a collection of blog posts from the authors of our new book, \u201cLand and the Mortgage: History, Culture, Belonging\u201d (edited by Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Parker Shipton). Land and the MortgageDaivi Rodima-Taylor and Parker Shipton The mortgaging of land, a risky practice usually treated as just an economic and legal contract,… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[107,311,1665,1948,875,1952,1947,1951,1950,838,1601,1602,1949,1953],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17090"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17090"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17772,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17090\/revisions\/17772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}