Transformations on the Ground: Space and the Power of Land in Botswana (Framing the Global)

Transformations on the Ground considers the ways in which power in all its forms―local, international, legal, familial―affects the collision of global with local concerns over access to land and control over its use. In Botswana's struggle to access international economies, few resources are as fundamental and fraught as control over land. On a local level, land and control over its use provides homes, livelihoods, and the economic security to help lift populations out of impoverishment. Yet on the international level, global capital concerns compete with strategies for sustainable development and economic empowerment. Drawing on extensive archival research, legal records, fieldwork, and interviews with five generations of family members in the village of Molepolole, Anne M. O. Griffiths provides a sweeping consideration of the scale of power from global economy to household experience in Botswana. In doing so, Griffiths provides a frame through which the connections between legal power and local engagement can provide fresh insight into our understanding of the global.

Anne M. O. Griffiths before retirement held the personal chair in Anthropology of Law at the School of Law, Edinburgh University. Her research focuses on anthropology of law, comparative and family law, African law, gender, culture and rights. She is the author of In the Shadow of Marriage: Gender and Justice in an African Community.