Demystifying the Mystery of Capital

Robert Home is Reader in Land Management at Anglia Polytechnic University. Hilary Lim is Principal Lecturer in Law at the University of East London.

• Introduction: Demystifying 'The Mystery of Capital'; Outside de Soto's Bell Jar: Colonial/Postcolonial Land Law and the Exclusion of The Peri-Urban Poor; Land Readjustment for Peri-Urban Customary Tenure: The Example of Botswana; Inheritance, HIV/AIDS and Children's Rights to Land in Africa; Botswana: 'Self Allocation', 'Accommodation' and 'Zero Tolerance' in Mogoditshane and Old Naledi; Trinidad: 'We Are Not Squatters, We Are Settlers'; Zambia: 'Having A Place of Your Own' in Kitwe; Conclusions.

'The essays in this collection make a vital contribution to our understanding of land tenure reform by testing de Soto's thesis at local level. Multidisciplinary in nature, it draws on expertise in history, law, geography and planning to provide rare empirical evidence of the land problems facing dwellers of peri-urban areas of the developing world.' - Social and Legal Studies, An International Journal'The essays in this collection contain rich empirical evidence of the limits of de Soto's thesis. They offer a forceful critique of de Soto's work and the project for privatization of land in the developing world of which it is a part. ' - Ambreena Manji, University of Keele, UK