ABSTRACT
Land rights strategies are not only a marked change from agrarian revolution strategies, but also a clear rejection of acquiescence or subordination to the status quo, in which the state and its laws are used solely to benefit and provide legitimacy for the elite. Land rights strategies promote land reform if mass mobilization is sustained in the face of legal and extralegal maneuvers of the elite and state actors are compelled to implement the rule of law. This chapter explains why land rights strategies have been adopted by two land reform movements and analyzes their dynamics of contention. It addresses the gap by analyzing cases where civil resistance is mobilized in wars of position against the state to challenge the structural violence of land inequality and dispossession in democratic contexts where neoliberalism is hegemonic.
