Land Tenure and Social Relations in Matrilineal and Uxorilocal Societies in Malawi

The present paper is a revision of a paper that was submitted to Land Use Policy in 2009. The review from LUP from 2010 asked for a rewrite. Due to personal reasons this was not possible before other tasks took all available time. In connection with the lead authors work on an assessment of the fit of the Customary Land Act 2016 and its Amendments 2022 with rural lives and customary land management in Malawi, the discussion in the present paper was necessary as background. Hence we have updated the paper and present it as a report from the Centre for Land Tenure Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Erling Berge, Ås, March 2023This paper is about social relations in customary lands for the matrilineal uxorilocal culture of the Lomwe, Nyanja and Yao tribes in Southern Malawi. The study was carried out in the districts of Chiradzulu and Phalombe. Qualitative methods were used to examine local histories and practices to identify the social and power relations between males and females in matrilineal groups and the roles of chiefs, extended families, and traditional practices in access to and control over customary land. By focusing on local histories the study documents that patterns of access to and control over customary lands are historical in nature and embedded in social ties and power relations. Male and female members of the household or family have equal use rights but unequal ownership rights. The land belongs to the extended family and not to the community or individuals. Instead of saying the land belongs to ‘me’ the people say the land belongs to ‘us’ even though the individuals may have user rights in perpetuity. The ‘us’ implies the extended family and not the community. The power and control over the land is located in the group of sisters and not in the head of family (mwini-mbumba) or the Chief. The patterns of control have to be understood for proper decisions to be made on how to organize access to and control over land, especially in a country where livelihoods are dependent on agriculture or are land based in nature.Denne artikkelen handlar om dei sosiale relasjonane i tradisjonelle jordbruksområde innan den matrilineale og uxorilokale kulturen hos Lomwe, Nyanja og Yao stammene i det sørlege Malawi. Studien vart gjort i distrikta Chiradzulu og Phalombe. Det vart nytta kvalitative metodar for å studere lokalhistorie og praksisar for å identifisere sosial- og makt-relasjonar mellom menn og kvinner i matrilineale grupper og kva roller høvdingar, stor-familiar og tradisjonelle praksisar har for tilgang til og kontroll over tradisjonelle jordbruksområde. Ved å fokusere på lokalhistorie dokumenterer studien at mønsteret i tilgang til og kontroll over tradisjonelle jordbruksområde er historisk i utgangspunktet og innbakt i sosiale band og makt relasjonar. Mannlege og kvinnelege medlemmer i hushaldet eller stor-familien har dei same bruksrettane, men ulike eigarrettar. Jorda tilhøyrer stor-familien og ikkje lokalsamfunnet eller individa. I staden for å seie at jorda tilhøyrer «meg» seier folk at jorda tilhøyrer «oss» sjølv om individet kan ha bruksrettar for all æve. «Oss» tyder stor-familien og ikkje lokalsamfunnet. Makt og kontroll over jorda er lokalisert i gruppa av søstrer og ikkje i sjefen for stor-familien (mwini-mbumba) eller høvdingen. Dette mønsteret for kontroll må ein skjøne for å kunne ta skikkelege avgjerder om korleis ein kan organisere tilgang til og kontroll over jorda, særleg i eit land der levebrødet er avhengig av jordbruk eller er grunnleggande arealbasert. [uxorilokal (= matrilokal) tyder at personane er busett på kvinna sin heimstad; matrilineal tyder at ein reknar slektslinjer gjennom mødrer; høvdingar og mwini-mumba-er kan like gjerne vere menn som kvinner; familie tyder stor-familien av mødrer, tanter, søstrer, søskenbarn, osv; menn har sjølvsagt sin plass i storfamilien, men dei er ikkje jordeigarar

Changing Patterns of Land Access, Inheritance and Emerging Female Village Headpersons in a Patriarchal Society among the Tumbuka in Northern Malawi

The Tumbuka are normally described as patrilineal where inheritance of property including land, cattle and village headmanship is from father to son. There is evidence that initially the Tumbuka were matrilineal. In this society, village heads are normally men, and land and other property are owned and inherited by men. However, there is an emergence of female village headpersons in this patrilineal society. This paper, using data from the Malawi Land Tenure and Social Capital (MLTSC) project, examines the factors that have led to this change and implications for residence at marriage. The study found that female village headpersons are largely single and that they are also chosen because there is no son or eligible male in the lineage to inherit the village headmanship. In terms of land inheritance, although land is largely inherited by sons, there is evidence from the data that in cases where there are no sons land can be inherited by daughters. Daughters also have access to land if they are divorced and they return to their natal villages. While inheritance rules exist, this paper shows that they are not as rigid

The ICT4scale Initiative: Harnessing ICT to Scale up Agricultural Solutions

This one-page policy brief provides a detailed outline of intervention research and scaling up of a soybean inoculant, using ICT technologies and platforms. The project aims at assessing the effect of a specific combination of ICT interventions and institutional arrangements regarding the number of smallholder farmers who are uptaking the application of a soybean inoculant

Changing patterns of land access, inheritance and emerging female village headpersons in a patriarchal society among the Tumbuka in Northern Malawi

The Tumbuka are normally described as patrilineal where inheritance of property including land, cattle and village headmanship is from father to son. There is evidence that initially the Tumbuka were matrilineal. In this society, village heads are normally men, and land and other property are owned and inherited by men. However, there is an emergence of female village headpersons in this patrilineal society. This paper, using data from the Malawi Land Tenure and Social Capital (MLTSC) project, examines the factors that have led to this change and implications for residence at marriage. The study found that female village headpersons are largely single and that they are also chosen because there is no son or eligible male in the lineage to inherit the village headmanship. In terms of land inheritance, although land is largely inherited by sons, there is evidence from the data that in cases where there are no sons land can be inherited by daughters. Daughters also have access to land if they are divorced and they return to their natal villages. While inheritance rules exist, this paper shows that they are not as rigid

On trust in Malawi: Behaviour in trust games in 18 Malawian villages in 2007

This paper originates from a series of 'trust games' performed in Malawi during the summer of 2007. The results from the games are interpreted as pure stylized cases of a social dilemma. Some dilemmas, such as the prisoner's dilemma, are more difficult to resolve than others. These are also called social traps. A group encountering a social trap can resolve it to the advantage of the group only by cooperation. The experiments were conducted in 18 villages, 6 from each of the 3 regions North, Centre, and South. Fifteen households from each village participated in the study. These were first interviewed, and later one person from each household was selected to play a trust game against another representative from the village. We lost a total of 3 players resulting in game results from 267 trust games. The interviews were analysed separately and provided the material for the construction of indexes by factor analysis (Berge et al. 2020a). The paper discusses the problems encountered in using this type of experiments. Economists specializing in experiments like this will often presume that results from a trust game are a good measure of general trust. The analysis of our data suggests that the game results measure actions. Actions that can be interpreted as demonstrating trust, but not trust as such. The trust games played are constructed as a social trap. The analysis of the data suggests that there is correlation between living in a village imbued by a culture of cooperation and the ability to avoid stepping into the trap in the game. All villages seem to be characterized by a culture of cooperation. Hence all players on average earn by participating in the game. But we also see that just as the theory predicts, the ego-centred players in a village with a high level of cooperation are the players who earn the most. By constructing indexes that characterize the context of each player we see that the ego-centred player earns most in villages located closer to an urban centre and where trust in relatives and family members are strongest. The winnings are somewhat less where trust in traditional authorities is stronger. The outcomes for these general relations are modified by the fact that the impact of the indexes is different in the different regions South, Centre, and North