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Predictors of Land Privatization: Cross‐Cultural Tests of Defendability and Resource Stress Theory
Author(s) -
Ember Carol R.,
Adem Teferi Abate,
Brougham Tahlisa,
Pitek Emily
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1111/aman.13484
Subject(s) - property rights , land tenure , agriculture , private property , bundle of rights , resource (disambiguation) , land law , environmental resource management , natural resource economics , economics , political science , geography , law , computer network , archaeology , computer science
ABSTRACT We have known for some time that complex societies are more likely to have land tenure systems based on private rights and less likely to have communal ownership. Less understood is why. More specifically, what are the mechanisms to explain why complex societies have more private property? What are the adaptive advantages of one system rather than the other? Conceptualizing and coding land tenure systems as a “bundle of rights,” this worldwide cross‐cultural study suggests that Acheson's (2015) economic defendability theory in conjunction with some environmental stressors, such as drought, may help us understand cross‐cultural variation in land tenure systems. Our results have evolutionary implications. They suggest that if property rights were claimed, communal property systems would have been the default system for any society having substantial degrees of hunting, gathering, or herdable animals. Agriculture by itself is not a strong predictor of private land rights, although irrigation agriculture is. [ land tenure systems, defendability, resource stress, cross‐cultural ]