Von Bertalanffy (1972) discusses the general systems theory as emanating from the efforts of early Greeks to find in the world an “order or kosmos which was intelligible and,
hence, controllable by thought and rational action”. He observes that one such early effort was the Aristotelian notion that the “whole is more than the sum of its parts”. He also recalls the works of Dionysius the Aeropagite on the hierarchic order about the choirs of Angels and
the organism of the church; Nicholas of Cusa’s notion of the coincidentia oppositorum, the fight among the parts within a whole resulting in the unity of higher order; and Leibniz’s mathesis universalis, an expanded mathematics not limited to quantitative or numerical
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The foundations of general systems theory as popularised by Von Bertalanffy, deemed relevant to the approach to land reforms espoused in this article is aptly captured thus:
Since the fundamental character of the living thing is its organization, the customary investigation of the single parts and processes cannot provide a complete explanation of the vital phenomena. This investigation gives us no information about the coordination of parts and processes. Thus the chief task of biology must be to discover the laws of biological systems (at all levels of organization). We believe that the attempts to find a foundation for theoretical biology point at a fundamental change in the world picture. This view, considered as a method of investigation, we shall call “organismic biology” and, as an attempt at an explanation, “the system theory of the organism” (Von Bertalanffy, 1972, p. 410).
Von Bertalanffy (1972, p. 410, 415, 423) then points out that when the “term ‘organism’ in the above statement is replaced by other organised entities, such as social groups, personality, or technological devices”, that becomes the programme of systems theory. Simply put, general systems theory is about the deeper examination of “wholes” and “wholeness”. The thinking behind the theory is that man with his “biological, cultural, and linguistic endowment and bondage”, is endowed with the ability to create and recreate the “universe into which he is thrown, or rather to which he is adapted owning to evolution and history.”
This is the space within which land reforms is being recommended. That alternative tenure regimes be examined through biological, cultural, socio-economic and institutional variables governing them in their “whole” and “wholeness”, rather than seeking to replace one form of tenure with the other.
This thinking, as earlier noted largely mirrors the positions of Chigara (2004), Davy (2012), Deininger (2003), and Manji (2006), albeit with considerable differences. While
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Chigara (2004), for instance argues for “humwefficiency” in the land reforms space as a model for resolving conflicts to land use and preserving the human dignity of stakeholders in the land environment; Davy (2009, 2012) argues for “polyrationality” to the approaches to reforms. In the same vein, while Deininger (2003) proposes the application of well-structured social conventions to the regulation and distribution of the benefits accruing from land; Manji (2006) draws our attention to the fact that haphazardly constructed land reforms will under- mine the livelihoods of people, strengthen patriarchal relations and intensify violence against women. Similarly, this approach is also in line with the proposal by North, a new institutional economist, who not only noted that institutional change is a process shaped by interactions between players in the institutional environment but also that “the continuous interaction between institutions and organisations in the economic setting of scarcity and hence com- petition is the key to institutional change” (North, 2005, p. 59). His proposal, when brought to the realm of land reforms, basically implies that social norms will naturally evolve from solidarity and subsidiarity and/or other land tenure influencing variables to competition as land resources become scarce due to population growth.
1.5 Conclusion
Land reform is in a state of methodological confusion. It has been characterised by polarised and entrenched notions and drifts from one supposedly ill-conceived tenure system to the other. In all these the ultimate beneficiaries of land reforms bear the brunt of intellectual and theoretical dialectics. While land users are in search for a system that address their fundamental concerns; reformers, intellectuals and policy makers are embroiled in a discourse in futility over the appropriateness of alternative tenure regimes to the attainment of reform goals. The situation is untenable and while I may not have added anything new to the protracted debate, I advocate a departure from the entrenched positions. I advocate a drift to a realm where there could be contextualised methodological rigour and possibly, unification as
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opposed to superficial superimposition of one tenure regime over the other. The metaphorical drainage system routed in general systems theory provides leeway for a contextualised, rigorous and better approach to the understanding of the evolution, nature, influencers and underlying variables of alternative regimes. This is the way to an improved and sustainable approach to pro-poor land reforms.
It is an approach that allows various actors to pursue land reforms by fundamentally examining the influencing variables to existing tenure systems and tinkering them to obtain the desired results. It is about attaining harmony in a given system as opposed to artificial and
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Chapter 3