Land Tenure, Gender and Globalization

Evaluating how land ownership relates to workings of global capital and the lives of both women and men, this analysis draws from field research in Cameroon, Ghana, Vietnam, and the forests of South America to explore relations between land ownership, gender, and class. The study considers how, in each situation, the people's resistance to global forces becomes a central theme, frequently through an insistence on the uniqueness of their livelihoods. Investigating the people of the Amazon, the survey focuses on the social movements that have emerged through the struggle for land rights, specifically concerning the extraction of Brazil nuts and babacu kernels in an increasingly globalized market. In Vietnam, the process of de-collectivizing rights to land is reviewed in order to comprehend how gender and other social differences are reworked in a market economy. Addressing a valuable topic, this overview raises new questions about the process of globalization, particularly in regards to the shifting relations amongst its key players.