Events

Watson Events

Catherine Boone ─ Regional Inequality and Land Law Reform in Africa

Monday, February 26, 2018

4 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

McKinney Conference Room, 3rd Floor

Reception to follow.

African countries are on the cusp of large-scale campaigns to promote the registration and titling of rural land, most of which is currently in the hands of untitled smallholders. For African societies, land commodification of land would represent a “Great Transformation” of Polanyian proportions. Who gains and who loses from this spread of market relations? Drawing on political science analyses of the political geography of inequality within countries, this talk focuses on territorial inequalities within African states that drive distributive conflicts around the titling and privatization of rural land.

Africa Initiative

Catherine Boone is Professor of Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a political scientist interested in patterns conducted research on industrial, commercial, and land tenure policies in West Africa, where her work has been funded by the SSRC, Fulbright, the World Bank, and the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and the ACLS, and the Long Chair in Democratic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.