Michael Albertus's "Land Power"

Michael Albertus is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He studies how countries allocate opportunity and well-being among their citizens and the consequences this has for society, why some countries are democratic and others aren't, and why some societies fall into civil conflict.

Albertus applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies, and reported the following:

Page 99 is in the middle of a chapter on how land power shapes gender inequality. It's the end of a vignette on India that demonstrates that link, and the beginning of a vignette on El Salvador. The last paragraph of the section on India reads:

Patriarchy did not originate in land reshuffles. The story of gendered inequality is much older than the shifts in land ownership that followed the Great Reshuffle. But decisions about who gets the land can sharpen a society’s sexism, and land power can entrench patriarchy nearly to the point of invulnerability. India offers a stark view of how land power can exacerbate the ugliest forms of gender inequity.

The next paragraph, which starts a new section, begins as follows: "Gendered land reallocation doesn’t just reflect conservative social intents and build on existing gender hierarchies. It can actually set women back by targeting them directly."

The Page 99 Test here reveals a central argument in Land Power, while demonstrating it only partially. These short excerpts reveal a key theme of the book: that land, and the power it confers to those who hold it, fundamentally structure society. That even extends into gender relations within families. Through the many upheavals in land ownership across the globe over the last two centuries – what I call the Great Reshuffle – governments have overwhelmingly assigned land to men within households. That tendency has reinforced and deepened patriarchal social norms in societies as diverse as India, El Salvador, Canada, and Colombia.

This point is part of a broader narrative in the book regarding how land shapes power – and how it shapes societies in turn along economic, social, environmental, and political lines. Who holds the land in society has long determined who holds power.

Visit Michael Albertus's website.

--Marshal Zeringue