This collection of research papers from across the African continent illustrates the complex and ever-changing rules of the land tenure game, and how government legislation and reform (formalization) interact with local innovations (informalization) to form land tenure systems.

Tor A. Benjaminsen, Christian Lund

Foreword; Formalisation and Informalisation of Land and Water Rights in Africa: An Introduction and Reinventing Institutions: Bricolage and the Social Embeddedness of Natural Resource Management; Neither Tragedy Nor Enclosure: Are There Inherent Human Rights in Water Management in Zimbabwe's Communal Lands? The Interplay Between Formal and Informal Systems of Managing Resource Conflicts: Some Evidence from South-Western Tanzania; Scrambling for Land in Tanzania: Processes of Formalisation and Legitimisation of Land Rights; When Farmers Use 'Pieces of Paper' to Record Their Land Transactions in Francophone Rural Africa: Insights into the Dynamics of Institutional Innovation; Monetary Land Transactions in Western Burkina Faso: Commoditisation, Papers and Ambiguities; Race for the Prize: Land Transactions and Rent; Appropriation in the Malian Cotton Zone and Custom, Contracts and Cadastres in North-West Rwanda