Property Relations by other Means: Conflict over Dryland Resources in Benin and Mali

Conflicts over natural resources and property concern the distribution of entitlements to resources and social identities. The highlighting of this continuity enables the insertion of conflict into a broader historical and theoretical framework dealing with social change, as well as access to and control over resources. However, this reveals nothing about the discontinuity between tensions over natural resources and outbreaks of conflict involving physical and symbolic violence. Case studies carried out in Mali and Benin provide an empirical basis for the discussion of the following set of exploratory hypotheses: they stress the continuity between conflict and property within the frame of a theory of access to natural resources; they emphasise the plurality of actors involved in disputes over natural resources in African drylands beyond the farmer–herdsman configuration; and they see resource conflict, property and policy as a matter of persuasion, that is, representation and narrative.