ABSTRACT
In lineage-based societies, a social norm commands that every household, by virtue of being a member of the community, be granted access to the amount of productive resources, land in particular, that it requires to meet basic needs (see, e.g., Cohen 1980, p. 353). Here is a “general right” that is “an inseparable element of the status as member of the tribe,” and can only be lost through formal expulsion from the group (Boserup 1965, 79). The relationship between such right of access and social identity is actually reciprocal. On the one hand, group membership and identity are the basis upon which land entitlements are defined and, on the other hand, access to a share of the corporate assets of the group or community serves to validate or confirm membership in the group (Berry 1984, p. 91). Paraphrasing Karl Marx, Shlomo Avineri writes that tribal property “appears as a relationship signifying social identification” (Avineri 1968, p. 112). The fact of the matter is that rights and obligations associated with land form “a guarantee of relational existence” in the sense that land is “the basis of social networks that enable people to access a whole series of material and nonmaterial resources” (Ng’weno 2 001, 118).
