ABSTRACT
In the introductory chapter, I have repeatedly mentioned several terms and phrases having a wide range of meanings in their usage by different people that tend to make their interpretation controversial, without investigating their relevant specification to poverty-reducing mechanisms of secure land access. Examples of these expressions requiring specification are: state interventionist authority for a speedy poverty reduction by redistributive land/agrarian reform; morality of unjust land acquisition combined with exploitation and institutional monopoly in land and labour markets; re-emergence of neoliberalism for enhancing equity and efficiency that can only be satisfied by a private market economy free of state control; problems of comparability with regard to measurement of poverty, inequality, malnourishment and land concentration, and so on. To clarify the meaning of these fundamental terms and phrases before we move to empiricism in the following chapters is the task of this chapter. It also attempts to set the frame of reference for the analysis of countries’ experience in the rest of the book. Otherwise, the discussion enters a vicious circle of philosophical puzzles about the different meanings of one term and seeking answers to what is meant?
