Best regards, Andrew Stewart
Begin forwarded message: > From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <[email protected]> > Date: June 13, 2021 at 2:48:38 PM EDT > To: [email protected] > Cc: H-Net Staff <[email protected]> > Subject: H-Net Review [H-Socialisms]: Narbutt on Meertens, 'Elusive Justice: > Women, Land Rights, and Colombia's Transition to Peace' > Reply-To: [email protected] > > Donny Meertens. Elusive Justice: Women, Land Rights, and Colombia's > Transition to Peace. Critical Human Rights Series. Madison > University of Wisconsin Press, 2019. Illustrations. 224 pp. $79.95 > (cloth), ISBN 978-0-299-32560-2. > > Reviewed by Amadeus Narbutt (York University) > Published on H-Socialisms (June, 2021) > Commissioned by Gary Roth > > Women and Land Rights in Colombia > > Donny Meertens's Elusive Justice: Women, Land Rights, and Colombia's > Transition to Peace provides an incisive and necessary critique of > Colombia's land restitution program. Others have highlighted the > historic and positive ways that gender has been incorporated in the > land restitution program and the later 2016 Peace Accord. In > contrast, Meertens elucidates how the gender-transformative capacity > of the land restitution process was still limited on the ground and > failed to provide comprehensive gender justice through the granting > of land titles to victims of conflict. The frictions that Meertens > describes, and their resulting shortcomings in gender justice > outcomes, show the folly of believing that "it was possible to create > a better society in a pen stroke" (p. 10). > > Land was a valuable commodity in the Colombian civil war, becoming > what Meertens describes as a "threefold political-economic asset," > where land granted territorial and political control, coca growing > capacity, and capitalist accumulation from other natural resources > (p. 5). Due to its value, many peasants--particularly widowed peasant > women--were displaced from their land by local elites, > paramilitaries, and guerillas, and were forced to migrate to urban > centers. When the Victims and Land Restitution Law was amended in > 2011 to designate people who had been internally displaced by the > Colombian conflict as "victims," the land restitution program that > had already existed could then be accessed by displaced peasant > women. > > Meertens's work does not implement the traditional > "formulation-implementation-evaluation" cycle of policy analysis to > dissect this development. Instead, it employs a socio-anthropological > approach to examine the discursive practices that follow that cycle, > as well as examines the narratives of women and judges involved in > the land restitution process. Through this, Meertens illuminates the > tension between the concept of gender justice through restitution and > two crucial barriers: a development model that continues to threaten > peasant livelihoods and a traditional gender order that still > pervades rural communities and families. > > In the first two chapters, Meertens provides brief analyses of how > gender has been included in other post-conflict land restitution > programs in El Salvador, Guatemala, Uganda, and Bosnia. This serves > to point out what shortfalls have been seen in other cases, and > specifically what commonalities can be seen between cases of failure. > Meertens also lays out a history of women's relationship to land > within Colombia, noting the similarities of how the Colombian case > may fall prey to known shortfalls of aforementioned gender-conscious > land restitution programs. However, Meertens also calls attention to > the specificity of the Colombian case, noting the need to separate > the concepts of dispossession and displacement. It is in this > complexity that Meertens situates her work: in a terrain fraught with > dispossession and capitalist land accumulation, within a conflict > where women bore a disproportionate share of violence, and embedded > in rural communities where patriarchal gender dynamics still prevail, > Meertens asks how (and if?) land restitution policy--even when > conscious of gender--can provide gender justice. > > The result is a work that stresses the need for post-restitution > action. Though the Colombian land restitution policy was an important > step forward, its results were "piecemeal and patchwork," especially > for women (p. 151). Land titling and property formalization did > nothing to address gendered insecurity, which still remained at the > microlevel of family and community. Further, continued gendered > conceptions of the private-public divide still fail to recognize > women's contributions to peasant economies. Thus, while land > restitution formalized property rights for many peasant women, it did > nothing to address other power dynamics rooted in gender. It provided > land in a scatter of plots across rural areas, lacking any network of > community support or women's organizations to link them. As a result, > many narratives that Meertens examines show little capacity for women > in these situations to recreate the "autonomous life project" that > had been torn from them years ago through dispossession (p. 151). > Instead, they opted to wait out the two-year "no sale" period, sell > their newly titled land, and leave. > > To address these shortcomings, Meertens provides several policy > recommendations, including--most important--the need for the > enhancement of women's organizational capacity within the > institutions of land restitution. Though Meertens is brief in > outlining what this may look like in practice, the book nonetheless > provides a compelling argument for its necessity, if not a thorough > prescriptive description of future action. Through such efforts, a > participatory "collective appropriation" of the restitution process > by women could lead to a democratization of land ownership and more > inclusive land reform in Colombia. In this call, Meertens's work > provides a critical and vital voice. > > Citation: Amadeus Narbutt. Review of Meertens, Donny, _Elusive > Justice: Women, Land Rights, and Colombia's Transition to Peace_. > H-Socialisms, H-Net Reviews. June, 2021. > URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55680 > > This work is licensed under a Creative Commons > Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States > License. > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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