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  3. The Politics of Harmony
  • Cited by 33
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    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      01 October 2009
      31 January 1992
      ISBN:
      9780511558139
      9780521392969
      9780521024686
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511558139
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.514kg, 256 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.401kg, 256 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Area Studies, African Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology, African History
      Series:
      African Studies (69)
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    • Selected: Digital
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    Subjects:
    Area Studies, African Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology, African History
    Series:
    African Studies (69)
    Information

    Book description

    Laurel Rose analyses how traditional ruling elites in Swaziland, as in other parts of Africa, use harmony ideologies to downplay and resolve land disputes. Such disputes could be used by foreign development agents or indigenous new élites as justification for implementing land tenure changes, including a reduction of traditional elites' power based upon land control. Swazi commoners accept the cultural value and legitimacy of most harmony ideologies, but they use strategies when disputing about particular land rights to produce more favourable outcomes. This book is unusual in its focus on political rather than economic dimensions of land tenure and disputes. It searches for links between individual concerns with land use rights and national concerns with land policy. It also examines gender and leadership issues associated with land, showing how women and new élites threaten land interests of men and traditional leaders.

    Reviews

    "Perhaps the book's chief merit is the serious attention it pays to the place of women within the Swazi customary legal system...This is a thoughtful book that will be of interest in legal anthropologists and other students of 'customary' law in postcolonial Africa." American Anthropologist

    "The core of this book provides a fascinating ethnographic glimpse into the operation of customary courts in the 1980s....this is an absorbing and provocative book, amply demonstrating the need for a new historical anthropology of Swaziland." Jonathan Crush, The International Journal of African Historical Studies

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