ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the main conceptual themes that are central to the present discussion of naming and claiming strategies. It traces some of the historical claiming and displacement strategies used in struggles over land and land authority in Zimbabwe's Communal Areas, as well as those grounded in the current era of crisis. The chapter addresses various forms and scales of naming in the specific context of land-claiming strategies in present-day Vumba. It is concerned with the plays of power embedded in such struggles in the Communal Areas, and the use of discursive strategies by a range of competing actors to legitimise their opposing claims over land, land authority and land use. The majority of Zimbabwe's marginalised rural citizens live in the Communal Areas where persistent land scarcity and insecurity has been exacerbated by land exhaustion and by the growing commodification and alienation of commonage and familial land.
