Property, community and the making of an agricultural frontier of the Peruvian Amazon

Thesis

This thesis examines how property, community, and deforestation are co-constituted to configure an agricultural frontier in the Peruvian Amazon characterised by inter-legality. It uses a case study of migrant small-scale farmers in a district in North-eastern Peru who illegally settled forestlands, areas formally under state ownership but with low effective control. The thesis is based on analysis of qualitative data derived from 42 interviews with farmers, and current and former government officials, and on legal analysis of Peruvian agricultural land and forest law. The thesis shows that farmers rely on non-state norms to enact private property in Peru’s forestlands, performing physical practices, such as demarcating boundaries and cultivating parts of the new plot of land. My thesis shows that as new communities begin to form, farmers elect village leaders who, in turn, provide the legal service of making land contracts and certificates to farmers. Farmers consider these local land documents as legitimate and legally valid, which help farmers further consolidate their private property claims, and provides them with a strong sense of tenure security that makes them apathetic towards official property titles, and even reluctant in some cases. The thesis argues that property and community co-constitute, and that the legitimacy of property is dynamic, transiting from an initial reliance on physical practices to a more abstract representation in documents. The thesis also shows that farmers and government officials actively navigate the non-state norms of property and Peru’s agricultural land and forest laws in a complex interplay. The thesis contributes to the socio-legal scholarship on property by providing an in-depth account of how contemporary local arrangements of private property in tropical forests are directly related to the creation of community and the transformation of the environment into an agricultural frontier.

Authors: Pena Alegria, PG

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-wrq2raem4
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: deforestation; Peru; land tenure; property; socio-legal studies; environmental law
• Subjects: Land tenure (Customary law); Property; Deforestation--Tropics; Law